The best American history book I've read in at least the past 3 years (at least... did I already say that?) is S.C.Gwynne's "Empire of the Summer Moon".

This book is an eye-opener for those who believe history is something on rails, for those whose sense of American history revolves around the War Between the States, the battle of the Little Bighorn, and such all. This is a book that, like "Blood and Thunder", explicates how vital the subjugation of the Southwest was to the doctrine of Manifest Destiny and the establishment of the current United States of America.

The paleolithic Comanche, or as they called themselves, Nermernuh, brought Mexico and the nascent United States to their respective knees for over 200 years. In that same time period they vanquished or extinguished tribes such as the Apache (far more exalted in modern folklore than their Comanche conquerors, for reasons only Hollywood could explain), Navajo, Utes, Kiowa, Cheyenne, and others.

The Comanche were the raison d'etre for the formation of the Texas Rangers... though "formation" is a bit too formal a term for the nascence of that particular group of hard-bit plainsmen.

Anyway, it's a good read, and full of balloon-busting facts. As a lifelong historian of the plains Indians, I find this book a refreshing and thorough treatment of a historical period within the lifespans of many of our great-great-grandfathers that bordered on, in some ways, Jurassic Park, or perhaps more appropriately, Planet of the Apes.

Two thumbs up.

As in, Buy and read the Sumbitch!

Thanks, Doc.

I'm all OVER it.

GTC

200 years? I thought it more like 40.Regardless,as Cynthia(Quanah)relays:

.....The Comanche crossed the land bridge from Asia to America between 11,000 and 5000 BC. Gwynne describes them as �short, dark-skinned, heavy-limbed, squat-legged and ungraceful� and says that in the millennia that followed their migration, �They grubbed and hunted for a living using stone weapons and tools.� The approximately 5000 members of the tribe�divided into several bands--traveled on frames pulled by dogs. They killed buffalo by setting prairie grass on fire and stampeding their prey over cliffs or into pits. Writes Gwynne: �They were primitive even by primitive standards.�

And then? �What happened to the tribe between roughly 1625 and 1750 was one of the great social and military transformations in history,� writes Gwynne. �Few nations have ever progressed with such breathtaking speed from skulking pariah to dominant power.�

*Hard to put down,wasn't it doctor? The atrocities that each warring faction committed upon the other make some of our gang POS' seem like a bunch of puzzies.

AMEN Doc, read it last year, powerful.

I will definitely check it out. Thanks for the heads up. So far, 'Lone Star' and 'Comanches: the Destruction of a People' by T.R. Fehrenbach have been two of my favorite books. Texas history and Comanche history is good stuff.

It is now on my Kindle. Thanks, Doc.

Good book. Have you read Comanches The Destruction of a People by T R Fehrenbach? Another very good read.


"I find this book a refreshing and thorough treatment of a historical period within the lifespans of many of our great-great-grandfathers that bordered on, in some ways, Jurassic Park ..."

It wasn't really that far back. I knew a man who killed two Comanches who tried for him west of what is now Crosbyton Texas. He was sage hen hunting when they jumped him. Read the old newspaper account of it and listened to him tell the story.

BCR

In 1680 the Comanche acquired horses from the Pueblo Indians after the Pueblo Revolt in Santa Fe, and they incorporated the horses into their way of life. They became the true Masters of the Plains. That played a huge role in their transformation that was mentioned.

I have a novel nearly complete about the last Comanche uprising. It's semi-historical since it is based on an actual event, but of course, the names have been changed. It begins with the attack on the Comanche village along the Pease river where the Army takes Cynthia Parker prisoner.

Dan

Definitely a good read! Very thoroughly researched and well-written.

Have you been to the place Dan? Just north east of Crowell I've been many times. Old old camp sites all along the river. You got old Sul Ross in the book?

Boggy,

PM coming.

Dan

With a recommendation like that, I'll download it tonight.

Good read. I've learned a lot about the Comanches and the Texas Rangers since by friends moved to Uvalde and set up their hunting business there. Good thing the kooks here make an exception to American "Nation Building" and empire building for that is exactly what Manifest Destiny was and if we had them around back then we'd still be the original Thirteen Colonies!

Ya' mean there would just be a thin rim of population on the East Coast and everything else would be...Russia....and Manifest Destiny would just be a theory?

The folks I see daily in my line of work are definitely not pioneer stock. If we had depended on people like them to expand and populate the West...it would've been the same results that you posted above!

Thanks for the tip.

damn, Ranger, now you're gonna set off Birdwatcher.....he and I had an extended PM exchange where he vented his issues with Fehrenbach. I liked his book and really enjoyed Empire of the Summer Moon.

the ability to concentrate superior force in a given location is very important. The willingness to be ruthless and spare no one is also a plus if you are aggressive.
All that pales though, when your numbers are small, your technology primitive, your resources meager, and your logistics problematical.
Great warriors yes, but doomed from the git go to fail in the long run.

That's it in a nutshell.Aquiring and learning to use horses to their full advantage changed the lives of the Plains Indians entirely. Monashee

From "La Primera, Spanish Mustang",....by Ian Tyson

..."Those Comanches were holy terrors, when they climbed up on our backs,

When the grass was right they could range for a thousand miles,....

But the Texicans had revolvers, when they came back from the war,

The buffalo were gone, and the Comanches moon was waning,...."

GTC

My brother majored in history at U of H and got an M.A. at Tulane, before he decided that he needed to make a living and went to law school. He probably has an even dimmer view of Fehrenbach than Birdy does. I have to admit that there are better books about Indians in Texas, but you kind of have to read Fehrenbach just to get full range of the historical treatments. Kind of like reading Walter Prescott Webb's history of the Texas Rangers--good reading when you're a kid, but somewhat lacking in objectivity.

That ain't no shhit, and if anybody really studies the indigenous people they know that the Europeans were welcomed as a source of food, slaves and novelty. We didn't work out to good for them though...much like African slaves.

Just ordered the book, found new hardback on Alibris, $17.00 with shipping. Thanks for the recommendation.

Just downloaded to my NookColor for $9.99. With Oprah gone, I really need the Campfire for book recommendations.

TR Farenbach also wrote an excellent book about the Comanches titled, Comanches: The History of a People.

Expat

Just finished it two days ago. Very good work and tells the story with no punches pulled on either side.

Indeed it was. Gwynne is a gifted writer and thorough researcher.



The only people I know of, historically speaking, with greater blood-thirst than the Plains Indians of the 19th century were the caucasian peoples of Europe from which most of us descend.

if you study the period Doc, 'blood thirst' was pretty common world wide at that point, and really, during the entire history of man kind.
Check the Balkins before and after WW I, Africa, Asia. We are a cruel, and mean species.

I'm such a cheap old bastard, that I'll get it from the public library.

Thanks for the tip Doc. I will pick it up. Always like reading about both sides of the story.

Another great read is Indeh by Eve Ball. Eve Ball taught and lived on the Mecalero Reservation. She was able to interview many of the older Apache men including some Chihuachuas.

http://books.google.com/books?id=q7...&q=indah%20apache%20book&f=false

My youngest son is a historic archaeologist here, working for a local archaeological contracting firm. Spanish and French colonial history were always our two passions. The most difficult thing to get anyone in this state to accept is the fact that the history of Texas did not begin in 1836.

I had heard of this book, then I completely forgot about it after retirement! Now I have the chance to make up! Thanks for the reminder Doc! Did it happen to mention the Comanche delegation that visited Natchitoches Louisiana circa 1770-ish??? At that time they returned the Spanish cannon they captured at the Taovaya village fight on the Red River, along with the help of allied Wichitas and Taovaya's in 1759!!!

One of the coolests quotes on this fight written by the Spanish commander, who led this expedition against the "Nortenos", was a Comanche "Chieftan" on horseback firing fusils, with two runners along side constantly reloading his "French" fusils so he never had an empty!

Kaywoodie

I finished it last week. It was enjoyable although I have a very hard time reading parts of any work dealing with torture and gang rape. Unlike the wartime situation where groups of people go away and do tragic stuff, it's hard for me to get my head around the idea that people can flip in and out of that mindset and be violent and ruthless on an out-of-town business trip and transition to being a family and civic minded guy the rest of the time. (Can you imagine that husband-wife pillow talk?????)

While on the topic of the end of an era, I immediately segued into Mark Steyn's "After America: Get Ready For Armageddon." I haven't finished it, but it is equally sobering.

I finished it, and my wife is now reading it.

Thanks for the tip, Doc.

Paul

I'm about a third of the way through it. It's a good one. He says that Texas volunteers "were not only not scared of Indians but actually 'liked' hunting them down and killing them"! It's a great history book.

I mentioned "Empire of the Summer Moon" in this forum some months ago and while it was an interesting read, I thought there was a goodly portion of revisionist history that I would expect from a born and bred New Yorker who lives in Austin.

While extensively researched, his citations didn't always match his conclusions. Or if they did it was only a partial match. Nonetheless, as I said, it was an interesting read. Many will enjoy it.

just finished Blood and Thunder about Kit Carson and primarily the Navajo people, always looking for another good read.


really appreciate when you guys share your good finds. Thank you.

Terry sent me his copy, and I THOROUGHLY enjoyed it !

GREAT read.

GTC

I'm in the middle of it right now, it is fascinating.

The Comanches played hell with the Mexicans, stealing livestock and people. The Spaniards welcomed the Texicans as a buffer zone.

Another book that i didn't see mention here is Los Comanches - the Horse People 1751-1845 authored by Stanley Noyes.
An excellent read - i finished it and then re-read it.

I haven't read anything recently that really captured my mind.......i will be seeking out the titles mentioned here. Thanx.

"The Black Fox" is a pure work of fiction but actually stays more firmly planted in fact than many "historical novels".

It was the basis for "The Searchers" movie but resembles it not much at all.

There actually was a "Nigra Brit" who ransomed captured children from the indians.I found his name on a marker at the "Salt Creek Massacre " site as a kid.[but it ain't spelled "nigra"]

"The Life of Billy Dixon" buffalo hunter (Adobe Walls) (Buffalo Wallow Incident) etc. Interesting read.

"Comanches: The Destruction of a People" is a fine read, but as I said to SteveNO, reads more like a cartoon "Graphic Novel" in its depiction of events. Fehrenbach gets some stuff apparently willfully out of sequence, sacrificing facts for effect, sorta like he was writing historical fiction.

Unforgivably, one place where he does this are the episodes where Colt's revolvers were first employed on horseback against Comanches. If that ain't sacriledge, I dunno what is.

Mostly Fehrenbach just channels Walter Prescott Webb, the 1930's author of "The Texas Rangers". Has to be said too, there were other folks out on the Plains what whacked more Comanches than the Rangers ever did, Fehrenbach omits mention of these almost entirely.

I thumbed through "Empire of the Summer Moon" in a bookstore maybe a year back, I was disappointed, maybe I hit the revisionist section I dunno.

Two books I ALWAYS recommend highly were both dictated by people who were actually there.

First off, Noah Smithwick:

Arrived as a before independence, a gunsmith by trade, built the first rifled gun made in the colonies. Knew Jim Bowie and fought under him against Mexico at San Antonio prior to the Alamo. Missed the Alamo on account of malaria but met Davy Crockett in transit. Pariticipated as a scout in the "runaway scrape", arriving on the field of San Jacinto shortly after the fact. Rode with the first "ranging companies. Drew blood in combat with Comanches, later LIVED with Comanches for some months. Rode with Lipan Apaches and Texas Rangers against the Comanches on the San Saba.

Best of all his first-person account is free online...

http://www.oldcardboard.com/lsj/olbooks/smithwic/otd.htm


The other guy is Texas Ranger Captain and Confederate General John Salmon "RIP" Ford. His collected memoirs are available even at the big chain bookstores in Texas for about $15: see...
RIP Ford's Texas.

http://www.utexas.edu/utpress/books/forri2.html

Doctor, lawyer, newspaper editor, State Senator. Ford likely survived more plains combat against Comanches than any other White man of his era, and best of all lived to tell about it. Fans of "Lonesome Dove" will recognize that much of that story was inspired by events in RIP Ford's life. He went on to lead Confederate Forces in the last pitched battle of that war, and won.

Both of these guys, Smithwick and Ford, and the adventures they relate would be too good to be true if they weren't real. But they were. Must-reads for anyone interested in Texas.

Birdwatcher

"Evolution of a State" by Smithwick

Mike I live here in Smithwick's back yard on the Wilbarger trace! He lived with ol' Placedo the Tokawa chief too, for a while.

BN

Maybe thats where he partnered with John Webber, the Vermont War of 1812 verteran who came to Texas in the '20's and actually bought the freedom of the slave woman he married.

When the Webber's eventually got ran out in the 1850's being one of those occasions where Smithwick rails against "the better sort" who showed up in their thousands only after all danger was passed.

Birdwatcher

Should finish it up tonight.....good read.

I'll ditto DocRocket's first post. Read the "Commanche Moon..." book about a month ago and rated it superb. Well researched, and the man can write, as well as look up facts and show their impact in the big picture across time and geography. Well written at the sentence level all the way to the organization of the whole book.

I knew quite a bit of it but not all by any means, especially the ascendency of the Commanches expanding east and south till they ran into US westward espansion, and astoundingly rolled it back for awhile.

The sections about Hays, the Texas Rangers and development of Colt's pistol are worth the book.

"Maybe thats where he partnered with John Webber, the Vermont War of 1812 verteran who came to Texas in the '20's and actually bought the freedom of the slave woman he married."

Yes! John was married to "Puss" Webber. She was a mulatto. Puss supplied the wash pot to the Local Tonkawas to us to cook the Comanche captive they executed and later ate!!!! I believe Smithwick was not all that impressed with this act of cannibalism.... Nor was he impressed with the Tonkawa method for thrashing pecans for the local whities. That is cut the whole tree down! LOL! I think they Webber's went to Mexico in the late 1850's and Smithwick went out to Morman's Mill by Marble Falls.

Sidenote.... I went thru all three of my degrees at "Colorado Lodge #96, AF & AM" in Webberville in 1986. Chartered in 1852. Currently the City of Austin is building an immense solar power project just north of the little hamlet....

I'll have to give "Empire" a second look.

Just now I'm reading a book given to me by a frequent poster (and apparent closeted Liberal ) here....

According to the book he gave me the Texans in Mexico during the Mexican War murdered HUNDREDS of non-combatants throughout, about like Nazi death squads, appalling the regulars and folks from other parts of the US who were on the scene.

Birdwatcher

I wouldn't say hundreds...... That's a bit of a stretch....

BN

Interesting how Smithwick downplays a bunch of stuff, including his own exploits. Reading between the lines, he kept company with Indians a bunch. I've posted here before the part about him and a Lipan Scout locating the San Saba Comanche camp the evening before that fight.

Turns out too the Lipan Apaches that rode with Jack Hayes hung out at Smithwick's gunsmith shop. Another time, so brief ya can miss it in the marrative, he offhandledly mentions pursuing Comanche horse thieves for TWO WEEKS across the Plains in company with thirty Cherokees.

My own favorite understated quick passage though is when his last two horses get stolen by Comanches. Exasperated, he checks the priming on his rifle and takes out alone on foot on the trail of the thieves "because there were only two of them".


Birdwatcher

Another thing to remember is Smithwick is narrating all these accounts to his daughter when he was 98 years old and living by this time in California, with her....

BN

Had a gift card for B&N unused since Christmas, so I did pick it up today.

Hope it's as good as touted.........thanks for the tip.

MM

Yepper, Britton Johnson, a good man by all accounts....

http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fjo07

JOHNSON, BRITTON (ca. 1840�1871). Britton (Britt) Johnson was born about 1840, probably in Tennessee. He became a legend on the West Texas frontier after the summer of 1865, when he went out onto the Llano Estacado in pursuit of Indians who had kidnapped his wife and two children in the Elm Creek Raid of October 1864. Johnson was a slave of Moses Johnson, a landholder in the Peters colony. Since he ran freight and his own wagon team after the Civil War, he probably had at least a minimum of reading, writing, and math skills. Although he was legally a slave, he served Moses Johnson as a sort of foreman of the Johnson ranch, with unlimited freedom to perform his duties. He was also allowed to raise his own horses and cattle. After the Elm Creek Raid, Johnson returned to find his son Jim dead and his wife and children taken, along with other captives. He spent until the summer of 1865 looking for Mary Johnson and his two daughters at reservations in Oklahoma and at scattered forts throughout the Texas frontier.....

After his adventures among the Comanches and Kiowas, Johnson moved his family to Parker County, where he served as a freighter and teamster hauling goods between Weatherford and Fort Griffin. On January 24, 1871, about twenty-five Kiowas attacked a wagontrain manned by Johnson and two black teamsters four miles east of Salt Creek in Young County. A group of nearby teamsters from a larger train of wagons reported that Johnson died last in a desperate defense behind the body of his horse. Teamsters who buried the mutilated bodies of Johnson and his men counted 173 rifle and pistol shells in the area where Johnson made his stand. He was buried with his men in a common grave beside the wagon road.

Surely he weren't the only guy to ride out alone into Comancheria looking for kidnapped kin. But thus far he's the closest I've come across to being an inspiration to "The Searchers".

Birdwatcher

I read it recently and quite enjoyed it. I do not know if it is perfectly accurate or revised. I don't really care. I did come away with support for several ideas I have been pondering for quite a while.

1. You have to fight your enemy in an appropriate manner. Figure how he fights and them beat him at his own game. I suppose it is the old "do unto others before they do it to you" type of fighting.

2. There really is no such thing as a fair fight when someone is trying to kill you.

3. Whites were not the first people to whup up on the Indians and destroy whole cultures. The Indians had been doing it to each other for a long time and tried to do it to us.

4. Groups who adopt superior technology have been dominating those without that technology for a long time.

5. The Mexicans who want to claim some of the USA in that area have no real good claim because they were run out by the Indians before the whites conquered the Indians.

edit: 6. Slavery was alive and well in places other than the plantations of the South.

The rifle-armed members of displaced Eastern Tribes had been wandering all over the West decades before our guys showed up, and whupping on the Comanches and other Plains Tribes pretty regular. A process redoubled in the 1840's and 1850's subsequent to the big Removals to Indian Territory.

Compared to the actions of these folk, the body count caused by actual White guys pulling the trigger could be pretty minor. Even as late as 1874 Mackenzie needed Seminoles and Delawares to show him exactly where Palo Duro Canyon was.

Those would be the exact same Seminoles who, thirty years earler were causing the Govt all kinds of grief in Florida. Didn't take 'em long to find their way around. Just twelve years after Florida, they were already intercepting Comanche, Kiowa and Apache raiders on the Rio Grande in return for land in Mexico.

Birdwatcher

There was a meat hunter from the buffalo range whose actual adventure appears to be a very close to the story line of the Searchers. I'll dig it up later on and see if anyone recognizes it.

Birdwatcher;This account is wrong.Somebody made a mistake in confusing the "Salt Creek Massacre" and a completely different battle which occurred at a different time and at least twenty miles apart.

I posted on here years ago about how four of us boys were horseback in the mid-fifties and found a marker placed in 1898 to mark the Salt Creek Massacre.It is in North Young County,roughly halfway between OLNEY and Jean and on the N side of SH 114.There is a historical marker there now [thanks to our find].

Artemus Nash , an old neighbor who was born in the mid-'eighties IIRC told us the details of the fight.It was a party of civilians from Ft.Belknap who had gone up Salt Creek to get salt.When attacked by Indians[don't know which tribe] they made a dash for the little rise where we found the marker.One young man on a small mare got so excited he kicked the wind out of her and one of the others came back and got him.

Two or three were killed but they kept that fact hidden from the Indians who eventually gave up.

The marker-about 40 inches high I estimate from memory- had not much information but it did have the names of all the party,about 20 in number.

One of the names was"[bleep] Brit".As far as I know, the small marker is still there , on private land.

The teamsters were traveling from Ft.Richardson in Jack County [not Weatherford] hauling fodder to Ft.Griffin , by way of Ft.Belknap.Again, a couple of us who were quail hunting found the monument [actually, I had a real good young pointer gyp who "honored" it, it being more or less white in color]which was placed at the actual site.

The monument gives the info I related and says the teamsters were "killed by Indians led by Satank,Santana, and Big Tree.I do not believe the teamsters were buried at the site.

This spot is South of Loving Tx about six miles.You could say it is four miles East of FLINT CREEK [not Salt Creek as your account says].There is a historical marker beside SH 16 but the actual monument is about 2 miles East of that on private property.

The three chiefs mentioned were captured and taken to Jacksboro for trial.

Now, to add to the mystery: In the novel I mentioned earlier,The Black Fox,Brit is killed in the manner and place laid out in YOUR account!But he is freighting from Weatherford to Ft Belknap , not Ft.Griffin.

If you look at the Frontier Forts stretching from Ft Worth to Ft Davis,it would not make sense to freight from Weatherford to Ft Griffin.That would require at least two , and maybe three days.Richardson to Belknap is a day's travel by wagon.Then Griffin one more day.Then Ft Phantom Hill one more day.

That was the reason the Forts were spaced as they were.

I'm sure there are correct accounts of all this that would agree with what I've posted, but I've seen magazine articles that obviously used your source and makes the same mistakes.

I wish someone would straighten it out.

All interesting history .i'll have to buy some books

I figured I would beat some of you to the punch and google up some info.This is what I find:

My fifty-seven year old memories are wrong in one place.The black man's name on the monument for the "Salt Creek Massacre" must be "Nigra Dick"-not Bret.All the accounts are consistent on THAT.

There are actually FOUR different events muddled up in the account Birdwatcher posted:

There were TWO different massacres which occurred near Salt Creek in North Young County.One involved a group of cattlemen gathering cattle who were attacked by Kiowa.I believe these are the names on the small monument we found , but it is obviously at the wrong site.Salt Creek has two forks , and that in part probably led to the confusion.

It is placed at the site of a battle between Indians and a group of settlers gathering salt.This is what is known locally as the "Salt Creek Massacre".

A third event which involved the teamsters and Kiowas is properly called the "Warren Wagon Train Massacre".It seems the flat plain just west of Cox Mountain used to be called the "Salt Grass Prarie" by the Army.Some of the Army reports mix up Flint Creek with Salt Creek.Brit Johnson was NOT killed in this battle.He wasn't present.

Brit and two other negroes were killed just South of Flat Top Mountain in a separate attack.This is about five miles west on the Butterfield Road from where the Warren group was killed.

Several of the Army reports of the time claim that this Young County area was the "most dangerous place on the whole western frontier in 1871".

Apparently it was the custom to place historical markers in the "old days" (1890's thru the 1930's), as close to the approx. location of the actual incident as possible.

The Coleman massacre marker here (Smithwick gives a great account of this incident) was for years out in the middle of a cotton field close to Coleman's branch, where the homestead was located. When the Hwy dept upgraded the closest county road to a state maintained farm to market (FM 969) in the early 60's, the marker was moved to state ROW.

I know of another marker in Tom Green county like this. Least it was still at the battle site in the 80's . Out in the middle of the pasture.

BN

Oh... maybe Fehrenbach wrote it...

...who IIRC has N. Britt's body unmutilated and left covered with a buffalo robe as a sign of respect. That part coulda happened, especially if they recognized him.

Santana is worth mention, on account of he did jump to his death out of a second story window, but at Huntsville Prison and without dragging a guard with him.



I always figured that was the source of tbe Blue Duck episode on Lonesome Dove, but perhaps there was another guy too as someone suggested here just recently.

By this time things were sure closing in on the Kiowas. After all, Santana and the other two guys were basically picked up by the Army at home afterwards, on the reservation, called in by their Quaker Indian Agent.

Old Satank (about seventy at the time) never made it to trial...



This account of his demise agrees with Ferhenbach. I'd like to think that I would have the steel to chew the flesh off of my own hand to slip a set of irons so that I could go out fighting (heck, I'd like to think I'll still have TEETH if I reach that age)...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sitting_Bear

The REAL moral of that episode being never to underestimate anyone whom a people like the Kiowas would call one of the "Ten Bravest", ESPECIALLY when that guy knew that the whole tribe was watching, and especially at that point in their history.

(..and don't ever pull a mean-spirited joke like that Peacock guy did either )

Birdwatcher

The date on the small marker we found,1898,makes no reference as to who placed it.It's granite,so obviously expensive.

Mr'Nash said "somebody came thru here along about then with a wagonload of them markers , asking around to find the places they belonged."

The larger "monument"- In fact that whole area just west of Cox mountain is still referred to as the "Monument Community",even had a church called that- marking the Warren event was placed at a different time.Some individual was credited with the placement of it in one account I found.

Hi Bob,

Ordered the book from Amazon. Are there other good books to read about that era? No romance real history. I can order them by mail. Many thanks.
Dom

Hey Dom! Another good book that I've always enjoyed was Wilbargers "Indian Depredations in Texas". Lot's of good reading. And mostly from the 1830's & 40's. Originally published in the 1890's. It should be back in print!

Bob

I need to find Willbarger's book again, if only to tally up a body count, so exaustive and valuable today is his collection of accounts.

Was it Willbarger's own father who was scalped by Comanches, eventually dying from the exposed skull left by the wound more'n ten years later?

Surely a lot of suffering in that interval.

Birdwatcher

The marker for Wilbarger's scalping and the deaths of his two companions is at the corner of 51st and Berkman Dr. in Austin hiding in plain sight. I've never seen anybody but me looking at it.

I'm re-reading Alan Eckert's biography of Tecumseh, "A Sorrow in our Heart". Even though its narrative style makes it more akin to fiction than an actual biography, it is very enjoyable and enlightening.

I've always been more fascinated with the Eastern Indians than the plains Indians. It would seem that they were far more advanced and better fighters than the plains Indians, and the wars they fought with the whites more brutal, bloody, and much longer than those of the plains Indians.

It is also worth noting that while they were very savage and effective warriors, their society was pretty advanced. Had Tecumseh been successful in rallying all of the Eastern tribes into the confederacy he wanted, the US might largely be confined to the Eastern seaboard to this day and our relation to the interior Indian tribes would be more like the British in India than our current model.

Read Empire of the Summer Moon a couple of months ago, and liked it tremendously.

Now I'd like to read a good (accurate) book about the history of the Texas Rangers.

Any recommendations?

Rip Ford

http://www.amazon.com/Fords-Texas-Personal-Narratives-West/dp/0292770340

The Texas Rangers
Walter Prescott Webb.

To Bob and other campers: thanks for the infos on books. Like most of you, i enjoyed Lonesome Dove (we had it in France, and, as old west firearms fan, i'm interested in that period of your country.
Dom

Texas Rangers: Wearing the Cinco Peso

http://www.amazon.com/Texas-Rangers-Wearing-Cinco-1821-1900/dp/0312873867

No it was his brother Josiah who was scalped. Two of my Great Aunts lived in the Wilbarger house for years in Bastrop, there on Main st. north of "downtown". Then two old maid cousins....

Across the road from my place is the old Roger's place. One of the original settlers of Austin's "Little Colony". One of the Rogers boys was killed by Indians cutting wood down on Wilbarger creek. Story is in Wilbargers book.

A Sorrow in our heart by Eckert is an awesome read, as are most of his books. I suppose my all time fav of his is "The Frontiersman" about Simon Kenton.

BN

Eckert is not taken seriously by that most unforgiving of modern-day Historians: the serious 18th Century reenactors.

But like Fehrenbach in Texas he is to be credited for making that history, at least in a broadly correct form, available to a wide audience. Its just that a lot of specifics of what Eckert wrote are eiter contrary to other sources, or not mentioned in original documentation.

As for the "better fighting" thing, maybe its explained in part by population demographics. IIRC in the early 18th Century there were still 25,000 Cherokees alone in Georgia, Tennessee and North Carolina. By contrast, out west, there might not have been that many Plains Indians between Mexico and Canada, even in the height of the horse period and before the Nineteenth Century epidemics hit.

Then too, Americans was increasing back then at a rate approximating that of modern-day Kenyans. Overwhelming as the flood of settlers was to the Ohio Tribes in the 18th Century, that was increased into a tidal wave of settlement through the Nineteenth Century when we was spreading across the Continent.

A couple of things not often pointed out however (tho' touched upon earlier on this thread); Hostile Indians scared the begeezus out of average Americans throughout most of our Frontier Period (with good reason).

The other is specific to the 18th Century East. Turns out that trade and Indian preferences likely had a great deal of influence on the style of the longrifle, beginning in the first half of the Eighteenth Century. And even when using smoothbores devoted an inordinate amount of time and shot to developing proficiency with the same.

One of the more interesting tribes is the Lenape AKA Delawares, present and surviving across tbe Frontier throughout the frontier era. Not bad when a 17th Century New Jersey group ends up lending their name 200 years later to a mountain range in West Texas (the Delaware Mountains, sharing top-billing there with the Apache Mountains).

John Heckewelder lived among the Delawares on the Ohio as a Moravian Missionary for more than 20 years (1760's - 1780's) and published an account of those people that is a valued primary source today...

http://www.archive.org/details/historymannersa00heckgoog

Accounts of ordinary folks for the most part, in day to day life.

I'm recalling the account of a grizzled veteran warrior of wide renown, face almost entirely covered with tattoos referencing scalps taken and war victories, who later got Christianity and when asked about his prior war exploits would only recount his capture by Jesus.

Unfortunately this guy ended up among the ninety-six unresisting Christian Delawares later clubbed to death by some Pennsylvania Militia at Gnaddenhutten.

Birdwatcher

Yeah, from what I read the Delawares were just "bad to the bone". Their was most always some included in the major trapping and exploring expeditions. They apparently loved to fight and plunder. There's a Delaware Creek between Fredricksburg and Kerrville I suspect was not a family name. At the Taos pueblo uprising when Price(I think) stormed the church it was said one Delaware "Big [bleep]" (that word again) put up the most courageous defense. That part came from "Wah-to-Yah and the Spanish Peaks" by Lewis Garrard, another of my favorite books.

A Spanish account estimates 100 Delaware families settled in far Northeast Texas in 1820, with larger numbers in neighboring Missouri and Oklahoma.

And you are right, they DID get around. One source has it that by the time Jedediah Smith found a route to California in 1826, there were Oklahoma Delawares who had already made that same trip several times. A thing almost to be expected when you read up on the mobility of individual Natives all over.(I mean, Lewis and Clarks were guided about half-way across the Continent by an illerate teenage mother).

Maybe if'n the Indians had newspapers and books by then, they would have been making a big deal out of all their "discoveries" too.

RIP Ford used Delawares as scouts, as did Robert E. Lee hisself. Which brings up another must-have Texas history book...

Jeff Davis's Own: Cavalry, Comanches and the Battle for the Texas Frontier

http://www.amazon.com/Jeff-Daviss-Own-Comanches-Frontier/dp/0471333646

The Second US Cavalry, Jeff Davis's project, and THE prototypical Western cavalry outfit.... modelled after the French experience in North Africa (Davis brung in camels too).

Has to be said though, despite all their considerable perambulations, this outfit seems to have intercepted considerably fewer Comanche raiding parties than did the Seminoles and Black Seminoles working South of the Border under treaty to the Mexicans during that same time period.

Birdwatcher

Might be so, although it was Shawnees who were prominent in the Southwestern scalps-for-bounty trade in the 1840's.

Just as often, if you'll overlook the 3,000 White settlers killed by Indians in Pennsylvania in the French and Indian War, individual Delawares turn up in Frontier accounts as friendly and multilingual.

Heckewelder of course, who lived with them in times of peace, mentions a bunch, and F&I era capive Highlander Robert Kirk ran into one at Fort Duquense shortly after his capture

(ANOTHER remarkable book see...
http://www.amazon.com/Through-So-Many-Dangers-Adventures/dp/193009860X )




Here in Texas the most famous Delaware was Jim Shaw.

http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fsh11

Jim Shaw, a Delaware Indian, was noted as a valuable frontier scout, interpreter, and diplomat during the period of the Republic of Texas and in antebellum Texas....

He appeared on the frontier of the Red River as early as 1841, when he was in his twenties or early thirties. At that time he reportedly saw the botched Texan Santa Fe expedition as the party turned west at the Wichita River, which they mistook for the Red River.

Shaw later claimed that if he had not been leery of the Texans on account of President Mirabeau B. Lamar's harsh Indian policy, he would have offered his services and guided them to Santa Fe, thus perhaps changing the course of history. At any rate, Shaw was obviously familiar with the vast plains and breaks of West Texas

Birdwatcher

Mike, have you ever read or seen Jean Louis Berlandier's Report (1835)to the Mexican Govt on the Natives in Texas???? It's a damn hard book to find as I believe there was a re-print during the Texas Sesquincentennial. Archaeologist son does have a copy. Excellent read on the SE tribes that ended up here. I believe it was the Mexican Lt. Teran that did watercolors of the natives in the report. He also mentions Comanche women copulating with dogs, although I don't believe he ever witnessed it. Only heresay from Mexican officers.... ;-)


BN

I dunno about the copulating with dogs thing, tho I suppose anything is possible.

Poor Matilda Lockhart was infamously abused and mutilated horribly while in Comanche capitivity, her pitiable condition famously sparking the Council House Fight here in San Antonio in 1840. OTOH Cynthia Anne Parker seems to have led a happy life among 'em (unless it was a severe case of Stockholm Syndrome).

RIP Ford mentions the episode of the Comanche mother who travelled alone off of the Plains to the Texas Ranger base at Fort Ringgold (Laredo?) to inquired after her teenage son Carne Muerte ("Dead Meat", the name the youth had given at the time of his capture, which I think was either sarcasm or resignation on his part) .

Young Carne had been brung back severely wounded by the Rangers after a skirmish, and after he healed was given tbe run of the place. Ford mentions how the men, touched by his mother's devotion, loaded them with gifts when they left. One of them episodes that makes Ford memoirs ("RIP Ford's Texas" mentioned above) so compelling.

Back East in the 18th Century, Heckewelder recounts four suicides among the Delawares. Two were young men who killed themslves after their beloveds chose another. One other was an older guy who, driven to distraction by his wife's nagging, took poison.

The last was a frequent visitor of Heckewelder's, who seeing his wife's growing attraction and time spent with another man, and desparing of losing his children who would be leaving with her (children belonged to the mother's clan), visited Heckwelder with a gift one last time, and then went out and killed himself.

Here in Texas I believe its in Hermann Lehmann's account of his years with the Comanche where a young Comanche man, despairing after catching his wife in bed with a trader, committed "suicide by White man"; charging a White guy armed with a rifle in the vicinity of present-day Castroville.

So while I dunno if they had sex with dogs, Comanche women apparently did possess the universal female ability to rip some guy's beating heart from his chest.....

Now, GUYS having sex with domestic animals of various sorts, in various times and places, I'd lend credence to

Birdwatcher

I wondered when you'd bring up the Lehmans! Awesome story.

BN

OTOH Cynthia Anne Parker seems to have led a happy life among 'em (unless it was a severe case of Stockholm Syndrome).

I've never seen any account of her captivity that did not include the fact that she was beaten and enslaved...it would certainly be "torture" by modern standards. After she became the wife of a powerful man, she probably had as good a life as any woman could among the Comanches. But it was a hard life even for a chief's wife.

BTW, I attended Cynthia Anne Parker Elementary School in Houston.

It wasn't unusual for white girls to be raised as "their own" after they kidnapped them, from their families which they almost alway tortured, unmercifully, before killing. I especially enjoy the stories about the Cherokee's favorite passtime of throwing the white babies into the air and watching them bounce off the rocks until dead.

And indicative of an important truth... that being we only get a bit of the whole story.

Fer example, earlier in this thread the Kiowas was brung up... and the famous three... Satanta, Settank and Big Tree, oughtta throw in Lone Wolf too.... FOUR GUYS, collectively taken by us as representative of Kiowa history when there were like what? one thousand OTHER Kiowas quietly going about the business of survival in those years.

I'd guess their history might read different then ours.

This crops uo with Hermann Lehmann too. Weren't he roaming alone and desperate for months on the Texas Panhandle after leaving the Apaches? No longer safe with the Apaches, alientated by years of captivity from returning to the Whites.

Finally in 1875 (??) he walks up one night on a Comanche camp. It should be understood this was AFTER Palo Duro Canyon, By this time the whole Comanche universe was collapsing, NOWHERE on the Plains was safe for them, and they were subject to attack by cavalry patrol or buffalo hunters at any time.

This skinny White youth walks in on their camp one night, and after almost getting killed in the original alarm, becomes the subject of curious interest when it becomes apparent he spoke bad English but fluent Apache.

Getting a guy in camp who could speak Apache, they hear Lehmann out. Finally concluding with a good-natured and merciful (as Fehrenbach puts it) "You'd better come with us".

Not how Comanches generally come across in popular Texas lore.

Birdwatcher

"spoke bad English but fluent Apache."

Curious, I wonder if his German was any better??????


BN

Or White boys either, a major problem often being getting these people to come back to White society later, especially back East. It seems the sort who most relished going out and knocking heads often weren't the same folks who did the adopting back in camp.

Of course intermarriage was so common whereever the Frontier stabilized for any length of time that by the time of Removal there were generally two distinct factions; full-blood and mixed.



White baby tossing? a favorite pastime? expound please...

So what, I mean the kids who attended C. Estes Kefauver High School (National Lampoon yearbook parody) knew Jack about C. Estes..

"Ahem"... and your buddy Fehrenback writes, of Cynthia Anne, and I quote...

"There is no evidence that she was unhappy on the Plains..."

...but, ya know how I feel about Fehrenbach, nice guy maybe, but hardly a credible Historian...

Birdwatcher

"a major problem often being getting these people to come back to White society later,"

BIG problem for Lehman!

One of my few (healthy) hobbies is reading accounts of pioneering Texas, via writings of the time. As others have indicated, life during the 1800's was hard at best, but the actual, factual accounts of savagery (for lack of a better term) at the hands of Texas indians will make you sick at your stomach. I don't trust history, written two, much less ten, generations later.

can you say, Stockholm Syndrome? and he was talking about at the time of her repatriation....when she was a married woman with three children and at the top of the Comanche pecking order, not when she was a frightened child, beaten, tortured, and enslaved by a strange savage people who had just murdered her family and kidnapped her.

People can get used to a lot in couple of decades, particularly when there appears to be no alternative available.

Comes down to this....


...about most any people we get two sorts of accounts, those that spent a considerable amount of time around 'em, and those that didn't.

I mean, can one imagine a youthful Sam Houston saying to his Cherokee buddies....

"I'm bored, lets go indulge in that favorite Cherokee pastime of tossing White babies on rocks...."

...or alternatively, a grown-up Sam Houston saying to his Cherokee buddies....

"I'm bored, lets go get drunk.... and then go toss some White babies on rocks....."

Ain't saying that other thing didn't happen, I mean I'm the guy who pointed out them estimated THREE THOUSAND White settlers tortured and killed in Pennsylvania during the French and Indian War, and those EIGHT HUNDRED White settlers knocked off by the Santee Sioux twenty-four years before Wounded Knee.

Take that as the whole story? No more than them hundreds of non-combatants murdered in Mexico duting the Mexican War (according to a book given to me by a poster here ) tell the whole story about Texans.

Birdwatcher

"Empire of the Summer Moon" does spend a considerable time on the subject of white captives and the Comanches. I don't recall having any particular quarrel with that aspect of the book, except for a certain amount of repetetiveness.

Harder than the lot of a Frontier woman? Patently not true in the case of tbe Eastern Tribes (see the Heckewelder reference), as fer Comanches FWIW...

...one of them struggling Comanches on the Plains, one of the most famous fat Indians in history... Mountain of Rocks... circa 1834, courtesy of George Catlin...



And Smithwick on family life, his being an account of someone who spent considerable time in their company...

http://www.oldcardboard.com/lsj/olbooks/smithwic/otd12.htm

There were six prisoners in camp: one white woman and two white boys, and one Mexican woman and two Mexican boys. The Mexican woman was the only one of the lot that evinced any desire to return to her people. She was not permitted to talk to me in private, and policy prevented her giving vent to her feelings in the presence of her captors.

After I had been some time among them, they relaxed their espionage somewhat, and she managed to tell me that she was very homesick, having been captured after she was grown. The poor woman cried bitterly over her situation, she having been appropriated by one of the bucks.

The white woman said she was very small when taken, and remembered nothing of the circumstances. She had an Indian husband and several children.

None of the boys remembered anything of their homes. One of the white boys, a youth of eighteen or thereabouts, I recognized as a prisoner we had twice recaptured, once at Gonzales and again at Victoria. Each time he stayed a few days, apparently quite satisfied with his surroundings, but, when he got a good chance, decamped, taking several of the best horses along.

The other white child was a bright little fellow, five or six years old. Loath to leave him to grow up a savage, I tried to buy him, offering a fine horse in exchange, but the squaw who had adopted him gathered him close to her bosom with every show of affection. "No," said she, "he is mine; my own child." That was plainly a falsehood, but the love she manifested toward the hapless boy was some palliation therefor....

The utmost harmony prevailed among the various divisions of the polygamous families. The oldest wife seemed to be the mistress of the harem. There was one large central lodge used in common by all the families, each squaw having a smaller one for herself and children, the latter never numerous....

But taking them all around they were the most peaceable community I ever lived in. Their criminal laws were as inexorable as those of the Medes and Persians, and the code was so simply worded there was no excuse for ignorance. It was simply the old Mosaic law, "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed."

In cases of dispute, a council of the old men decided it, and from their decision there was no appeal. And when one died, all his belongings were destroyed, precluding all possibility of a family quarrel over the estate.

During the whole period of my sojourn among the tribe -- three months -- I did not hear a single wrangle among the adult members. The youngsters had an occasional scrimmage, which they were allowed to fight out to the amusement of the onlookers.

Notwithstanding their inhuman treatment of the helpless prisoners that fell into their hands, I never saw a woman or child abused. The women, as in all savage tribes, were abject slaves, but their inferiority was their protection from the chastisement which "civilized" husbands sometimes visit on their wives.

An Indian brave would have felt it a burning disgrace to strike a woman. I don't think they ever resorted to corporal punishment within the tribe. Like the ancient Jews, however, tribal law didn't apply to "the stranger Without the gates," nor within, either, when the stranger was a captive.

The women, of course, performed all the labor, aside from killing and bringing in the game; stripping the skins from the animals, dressing and ornamenting them with beads or paint, a process which interested me very much. The skins were first staked down to the ground, flesh side up. With a sharp bone the squaw then scraped off every particle of flesh; next the scraped surface was spread with lime to absorb the grease, after which the surface was spread with the brains of the animal, rubbing it in and working it over till the skin became soft and pliable, the process requiring days and days of hard work.

Then with paint, which they manufactured from colored chalks, and brushes made of tufts of hair, the artist, with the earth for an easel, beginning in the center, drew symbolic designs, the most conspicuous of which was the sun, executed with a skill truly remarkable.

A multitude of different colored rays commingling in a common center and radiating out in finely drawn lines, the spaces made by the divergence again and again filled in, taking as much time as a work by the old masters. Time was no object, life leaving nothing to offer beyond the gratification of this single vanity.

These painted robes were worn over the shoulders like shawls, the fur side underneath.

The old people of both sexes were treated with deference, another sign of their benighted state. Little notice was taken of the female children by either parent, all their pride and affection being centered on the embryo warriors, fitting them out with bows and lances, with which they fought imaginary foes and "mimic frays,"....

The little Indian girls, brought up in the way they should go, played at dressing skills, setting up lodges, etc. Yes, and they played with dolls, too. I was never allowed to inspect those Indian doll babies, so I can't tell how they were made; but the little Indian maids bound them on pieces of bark, setting them up against trees, swinging them in hammocks or carrying them on their backs just as their mothers had done with them....

Birdwatcher

Just got done with "Empire...".

Gwynne does a fine job, like he wrote Fehrenbach's "Comanche" book better. But I'm gonna nit-pick.

Starts out with the phrase "the Tonkawas were always losing"...

Near as I can tell the original of that sentiment is a 1930's Texan account of Ford's 1858 battle against Comanches in Oklahoma wherein the author says Ford's Tonkawa scouts fought the Comanches in individual duels but that Ford got disgusted because the Tonks were losing every one.

Interestingly, Fehrenbach (alos from Texas) also has Ford at that fight with 113 mostly Tonkawa Scouts but then discounts almost entirely their role, resorting to the stereotype of a 'few grim Texans checking their priming'. Ford hisself in "RIP Fords Texas" mentions mostly 100+ Caddos with him on that expedition, and gives them full credit for their very active role, including the shooting of Iron Jacket (Fehrenbach says Texans did it). Why the Texan authors felt it necessary to rewrite history that way is open to speculation.

Anyhoo... the Tonkawas were infamously cannibalistic. Yet for a people that were "always losing" (as per Gwynne's "Empire") they sure were a persistent bunch.

Their remnant survivors of massive epidemics (the usual cause of such things) lived entirely within raiding range of the Comanches throught the late 18th/19th Centuries, and we know the numerous and collectively powerful Comanches despised them more than most anyone until the very end (having their kinfolk get eaten does that to folks).... yet there they were.... still around in numbers as late as 1871, enough to lead Mackenzie out to whup Comanches as Gwynne begins.

Interestingly, accounts have it that what REALLY PO'd the Comanches in the afermath of the 1840 Council House Fight in San Antonio (where more'n 50 Comanches men, women and children who had come in peaceably were killed by the Texans, although in truth, they were fighting back) was the thought that those same Texans were butchering and eating the dead.

The collective fighting power of the Comanches is way overblown. 700 on the great Linnville Raid in the aftermath of the Council House Fight, and yet only a relative handful of White casualties, most caught by surprise. And then a defeat of that same party at Plum Creek by a lesser number of Texans, fighting WITHOUT revolvers (more on that myth later).

Also hundreds of Comanches on the infamous Elm Creek raid of 1864, yet only a relative handful of White casualties.

Where the Comanches excelled was at catching the helpless and/or hugely outnumbered by surprise, and where conditions were such that there was a steady supply of victims the body count mounted up, as it did on the Texan Frontier and in Mexico for decades.

In the same vein, Gwynne calls Quanah Parker "brilliant", perpetrating the myth. While QP was a remarkable guy, especially in the reservation period, I can't see where he ever did anything during the fighting times that weren't standard, run-of-the-mill Plains Indian tactics.

More later.

Birdwatcher

I was doing a little reading last night about the Osage. I hadn't realized that they were so tall. And of course, when they chose to go over and do a little raiding, they routinely kicked Commanche and Kiowa arse.

I got the impression that Gwynne's characterization of Parker as "brilliant" was more in respect to his ability to bring the Comanche in to the reservations, keep them there, and play the politics necessary to be successful thereafter. The fact that he had been a warband leader prior to that, but made the transition so well, speaks volumes as to his ability to adapt to changing times. Brilliance? Perhaps, perhaps not. But he was certainly a remarkable individual to have done as well as he did.

Fehrenbach to his credit does include reference to the Comanches closely tying uo the tails of their horses when going to war. Apparently the Osage were noted for the tactic of sprinting out on foot from cover, grabbing the tail of the horse their foe rode on, and pulling the horse off of its feet, tumbling the rider to the ground.

Birdwatcher

The Osages got the last laugh on everybody when Phoenix Oil Co. made the first well in Oklahoma on the Osage reservation just before the turn of the century, and the tribe members became fabulously wealthy. Some still are.

Doc, gonna nit-pick here....

Three quarters of those Comanches still living were ALREADY on reservations around 1870, when Quanah Parker was just hitting his stride on the National stage, by the time Quanah gave up there were really no alternatives.

What I find fascinationg is Isa-tai, the guy who conjured up the famous "bulletproof" medicine prior to Adobe Walls wherein Quanah's followers, under his personal planning and direction, were shot to pieces by some of the most skilled and best-armed riflemen on the planet.

Isa-tai didn't have the advantage of being half-White, ergo conjuring up a lot of White sponsors after the shooting times were passing into legend, but still we find the guy opposing Quanah in tribal elections: Radical fringe-group Shaman and Prophet to mainstream tribal politician.... aguing such things as grazing allotments. Now THAT sounds like a transformation.

I'm gonna digress a little and talk about the 'unprecedented' Comanche mobility in that the same Comanches could raid 400 miles one way and 400 miles in another.

One of the most persistent myths in our popular history is that we tend to immobilized our Indians, as if they were stuck to the parts of those maps where the tribal name is written in those posters.

100 years prior to all of this, the Iroquois in Upstate New York were conducting a decades-long war with the Cherokees.... in Georgia.... routinely making about a 2,000 mile round trip, on foot yet. Likewise the Mississagua from the North side of Lake Erie were complaining about the dastardly and cunning Chickasaw... from Mississippi.

In the F&I War, it was the grave misfortune of a few captured Colonials up on Lake Champlain in northern New York State to be butchered, cooked and eaten by backwoods hick (they were still using bows and arrows) Odawas (Ottowas)... from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

Likewise one of the more fortunate White captives from Lake Champlain was hauled across Lakes Ontario and Erie and clear down the Ohio and across to Louisiana when his Shawnee (IIRC) captors went to visit their kin among the Choctaws. And this was all in the early 1760's.

The all-time champions here maybe being them four Nez Perce who in 1831 took it upon themselves to travel upstream along the flood of Whites (ergo downstream along the Yellowstone, Missouri and Mississippi) on what is portrayed as seeking Christian instruction but seems certainly to have been a fact-finding tour: 2,000 miles one way from Idaho clear down to Saint Louis (by which time they had presumably seen enough) and then back again.

So it ain't surprising that a mounted Comanche from present-day Amarillo might visit San Antonio, or even Houston. What IS surprising is that long-term misery among the highly mobile Comanches should have been so localized.

A full thirty-five years before the last holdouts among the remote High Plains Comanches would be facing their final cultural annihalation, Gwynne points out the episode of impoverished, starving Southern Comanches from North of San Antonio visiting Sam Houston in 1839.

Why on earth these miserable folk didn't merely ride West for a week and take up residence with the next bunch of Comanches is a mystery... unless the vaunted Comanche plains-wide solidarity across the Plains was a myth.

Indeed the "next bunch" of Comanches would be suffering from deprivation and constant White hostility in their own turn, while confined by the 1850's on Texas reservations, still a full twenty years before Mackenzie attacked Palo Duro Canyon.

The conclusion seems inescapable... those people must have run out of options, notwithstanding their still-free kin a few hundred miles West.

There musta been a lot going on here that we are only dimly aware of.

Birwatcher

If they can't be googled,they don't exist.Thought you knew that.

I dunno, like I said, ask Sam Houston, he spent years among 'em.

Sadistic Cherokees? Sure. Sadistic Whites? Naaah.... never happen... ask Chivington, or Andy Jackson's bunch in the Creek War, or the Paxton Boys, or the Plymouth militia....

And if'n it DID happen, surely them Whites roasting scalps to preserve 'em or riding around with vaginas on sticks or whatnot represent our whole history. Musta been ALL of us was that way.

Birdwatcher

You sure as hell knocked the straw man flat on his ass.

As far as the point Pat MADE , however............

?? A straw man is someone who doesn't exist, I was pointing out just some of numerous historical examples, as fully documented as Pat's accounts.

But... I suspect you have little interest in the facts.

As for "making you sick to your stomach", one of the worst and most detailed accounts we have is what Jacob Greathouse and his buddies did to a party of famously friendly Iroquois on the Ohio in 1777 after said Indians had been invited across the Ohio to Greathouse's camp.

The White guys shot 'em in cold blood, and then clubbed a young, pregnant Indian woman and cut the squirming late-term infant out of her belly and hung it up. An act which, if nothing else, also got scores of OTHER White folks killed in the aftermath.

Greathouse hisself escaped retribution, but, a full fourteen years later when he happened to fall into Shawnee hands they knew EXACTLY who he was, and acted accordingly.

If those White folks in Pat's account had gone on to murder Cherokees indiscrimantly I expect you'd give 'em a walk. I mean, even now YOU are willing to condemn the whole bunch and you weren't there, not even close.

OK, what do you suppose the family history with respect to White folks was of a displaced Cherokee in 1830's Texas?

Greathouse hisself likely grew up in Pennsylania in the F&I years when around 3,000 White folks were butchered by Indians in just that one State.

(So did Daniel Boone, but he remained a famously humane man).

I ain't excusing anything, and once again here's the issue you aint answered... do you suppose the folks that Sam Houston held in such high regard were routinely tossing little White kids around until they died?

Birdwatcher

. I mean, even now YOU are willing to condemn the whole bunch and you weren't there, not even close."

What in Hell are you talking about?

I remark on Pat's fondness for firsthand accounts , and you have this to say?

Speaking of straw men....

Well hey, here's something that IS googled (as opposed to the books with cited sources or the first-hand accounts referenced prior to this). But a wiki will serve here, on account of the Texas Hill Country Germans' fair treatment of Comanches and the resultant truce that ensued after they took the unprecedented step of politely asking permission to settle is still celebrated every year in Frederickburg TX to this very day, the modern-day Comanches coming down from Oklahoma each year for an annual celebration...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meusebach%E2%80%93Comanche_Treaty

Fehrenbach gives a version of events that agree with this, Gwynne skips it entire other than to mention that Comanches would freely and amicably enter German homes on occasion.

This brings up ANOTHER must-read, Frederick Law Olmstead's "A Journey Through Texas"

http://books.google.com/books/about/A_journey_through_Texas_or_A_saddle_trip.html?id=oJ3jKrAtW8wC

Olmstead was the guy who later went on to design Central Park. In 1857-58 he came in through Louisiana and traversed the State to across the Rio Grande and back. His account is probably the best snapshot we have of conditions across Texas at that time. Amid the general dirt floors and general illiteracy common everywhere else, the principled, hard-working German settlers in Texas was playing pianos and singing opera out there in the boonies.

They would pay dearly for their predominantly anti-slavery sentiments just a few years later, when the Confederate hanging squads came around.

But I digress... the REAL reason for me mentioning Meusenbach's Treaty was the prominence two Eastern Tribes, the Shawnee and the still-reclusive Kickapoos play in the account; present in numbers across putative "Comancheria" and travelling freely (although there was never even remotely close to "60,000 Kickapoos" even back on the 18th Century Ohio Frontier, surely them Shawnee Scouts didn't want the Germans moving in).

Look at period accounts (including Ford's and Smithwick's), and you'll find Delawares, Kickapoos, Shawnees and Cherokees show up all over the Plains

So many Cherokees in fact crossed the Texas Plains to take up residence in the Border Country that the famous Alabama Silversmith and prominent Cherokee syllabarist Sequoya hisself was to die down there while looking for lost kin.

We find Delawares and Shawnees frequently hired on as scouts, valued for their multilingual abilities as well as their first-hand knowledge of the terrain, of Comancheria. And ya can't get first-hand knowledge without seeing it first-hand, even if it was in the middle of a place where Comanches supposedly excluded all intruders.

The reclusive Kickapoos had/have a history of avoiding outside contact, so much so that even today their bloodlines, language and culture have survived better than any of the 18th Century Ohio Tribes, especially at their old settlement in Mexico south of Eagle Pass/Piedras Negras. Anyhow, back then, the Kickapoos didn't hire on as scouts for anyone, but they DO figure in one of the major whuppings ever handed out to Texans.

Neither were the Comanches friendly with all these people all the time, in fact there's references to a number of shooting altercations, many of which likely escaped our history entirely. One gets the impression that basically, the wandering Eastern Tribes wandered wherever the hell they wanted across the West.

(and further North, Iroquois tribesmen from NY and Eastern Canada formed a major component of the trappers during the heyday of the Rocky Mountain Fur Trade)

In the 1850's, about 500 Seminoles and Black Seminoles, late of Florida and then the Indian Territory, took up residence in West-Central Texas long enough to get in a corn crop, this about fifty miles WEST of the White settlement line, smack dab in Comancheria, and at the time these people were NOT buddies with the Comanches, in fact they would shortly move to Mexico and hunt Comanche war parties in exchange for land.

Fehrenbach writes all these folks off entirely as "pathetic remnants". Even Gwynne barely mentions them. Remnants they may have been, but they still came in groups of hundreds, and they DID have rifles, and knew how to use 'em. And basically the Comanches couldn't do much about it.

Birdwatcher

Interesting stuff, Mike. Thanks for posting that! I'm gonna look for Olmstead's book.

Hey Doc, you must also get "RIP Ford's Texas", Ranger Captain John Salmon Ford's collected memoirs, hard to say enough good things about it, tho' it is written in the sometimes tedious 19th Century idiom.

A book notification here, tho' I only thumbed through it so cannot give an opinion on it, some here may already know of it....

"The American Rifle: A Biography" (2008)

http://www.amazon.com/American-Rifle-Biography-Alexander-Rose/dp/0553805177

Found it yesterday in Austin, at that bastion of Liberalism "Book People", which despite themselves have offered some remarkably Politically Incorrect titles on their shelves over the years (fer example... most everything I have read on Roger's Rangers I found on their shelves).

Pertinent to this thread what the book DOES lay out is the early spread of rifles into Indian hands, a process underway by the 1740's. Such that by that time the Upstate New York Iroquois were already complaining about losses in their ranks inflicted by the rifles of the Chickasaws... from Mississippi.

The gist of what seems to be an emerging consensus can be found written by te serious folks at www.americanlongrifles.com .

No technological development occurs in a vacuum, and the American longrifle as a technological as well as an artistic development was no exception. It is generally accepted that the American longrifle evolved from the Jaeger rifle brought to the colonies by German gunsmiths in the early 1700�s and most certainly imported in some quantity along with English arms up until the American Revolution...

At one time, some thought that rifling and a patched ball were innovations unique to the American longrifle. They weren�t. These things were known to European gunsmiths for at least two centuries before the American longrifle and were incorporated into the Jaeger.

Some also have the impression that the Jaeger was heavy and hard to handle. They were not. From personal experience, I know that Jaegers were surprisingly light and easy to handle. In fact, I would much prefer to carry a Jaeger in the woods than a typical longrifle....

That begs the question, why were changes made? Well, the standard answer has been something along the lines that the American longhunter needed an economical, accurate, and long range gun to put food on the table, take skins for cash, and protect their families from Indian raiders.

The Jaeger rifle was accurate but it was not necessarily a long range gun or economical in terms of lead. It has been thought that in order to accommodate the needs of the longhunter, the early gunsmiths started to elongate the barrel and reduce the caliber of their rifles.

At least, this is the standard answer that you will glean from some of the earlier research.

While I have generally accepted this explanation for the elongation of the barrel and reduction in bore size in the American longrifle, the argument has always seemed to be a little too contrived and does have some problems....

While no one denies the influence of the Jaeger on the development of the American longrifle, Peter Alexander proposes that the English trade gun had as much influence as the Jaeger. The argument goes that there were not enough white longhunters to account for all the rifles we know were made....

Who then, owned all those early longrifles. The answer, according to Alexander, is the Indians. He contends that, as the primary harvesters of furs and skins on the North American continent at the time, the Indians had the most need of rifles and the wealth from the fur trade to buy them. This argument has the ring of truth to me.

According to Alexander, the real reason for the longer barreled American rifle, was that the Indians had become accustomed to the long barreled English trade guns and wanted rifles of similar form. The German gunsmiths here, and possibly in Germany, supplied what their customers wanted. There may have been more style than substance at work in the evolution of the American longrifle. Imagine that!

Since buying one I have become a whole lot more familiar with 18th Century-style flinters, and a long-barreled smoothbore is capable of a surprising amount of accuracy when a careful load is worked up, in terms of "minute of deer" or "minute of redcoat" about equivalent to many rifles out past 100 yards, in an arm far more versatile.

I bought a smoothie on account of this is what MOST Colonials/Americans were carrying in the 18th. My 9lb fowler is a club however compared to accurate recreations of the contemporary Indian Trade gun. A builder named Mike Brooks makes the best...

www.fowlingguns.com

His 20 guage early 18th Century Carolina Trade Gun replica has a 48" barrel and weighs in at just 6 pounds.

I've handled one and compared to my 9lb 18th Century Mossberg-equivalent, a Carolina gun handles about like a magic wand AND shoots just as well as my fowler

THAT being the sort of gun common to the Southeast Tribes by the early 18th, and FAR from crude as per popular beliefs relating to Indian guns in general.

Not hard to imagine that general preference in form being transferred to rifles, as the guy at americanlongrifles suggests.

This supposition of rifles appearing first on the Frontier in Indian hands is backed by a number of period accounts and remaining records. To the point that if you are a reenactor, anymore if you are going to re-enact ANYONE White from 18th Century New York/Vermont/New England, you'd most likely be carrying a smoothbore... UNLESS you're playing an Indian from those same areas. Lots of rifles in Iroquois hands documented fer example, almost none that early from the whole Mohawk Frontier in the hands of White folks.

What is probable is that Indians were commonly carrying longrifles in the Kentucky/Ohio Country a full generation before the likes of the Boones and Kentons showed up, the longrifle being adopted by the Longhunters much as leggings, breechclouts and tomohawks were, for similarly practical reasons.

No one questions the importance of the rifle tradition in our own culture, the point relevant to this thread being that them Eastern Indians across Texas had that same tradition, and used their rifles to lethal effect, essentially whupping the Comanches at every turn WE know about.

They fought no major conflicts with Whites during the Texas era (other than the forcible eviction of Chief Bowles's East Texas Cherokees). But, given that while some Shawnees for example were guiding Hill Country settlers, OTHER Shawnees 700 miles to the west were collecting Apache scalps for bounty, and in light of the fact of Lt. Pat's accounting of Texas Cherokee atrocities, it seems probable that at least some White travellers out on the Plains were quietly "disappeared" over the years .

Ford in his memoirs relates the 1850's episode of a crack shot among the Comanches raiding South Texas who was "armed with a Swiss rifle" and commenced to picking off his Rangers. I dont recall him describing the rifle, or if they ever saw it, tbe range being extreme. But the Indian MOST likely to be shooting it, if Indian it was, would most likely be a member of one of the Eastern Tribes.

In early 1865 a combined party of nearly 500 Texans set out from the settlements on a punitive expedition against the Comanches and Kiowas but, to their misfortune, found Kickapoos instead. see...

http://cvassanangelo.org/uploads/The_Battle_of_Dove_Creek_wbiblio.pdf


and...

http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/btd01

Now, one could theorise that the Texas Confederates were fielding their "B" teams on the Frontier, especially by that late date, and that the flower of Texas manhood had already gone East to fight. But really, there seems nothing wrong with their tactics that day... an advance on the unsuspecting Indian camp on one side, combined with a mounted rush to steal their horses on another.

Shoulda been a route, and likely would have been with archtypical Plains Indians like Comanches.

I dunno the extent to which the Kickapoos were carrying Enfields, doesn't really matter, the REAL point being by that time they had been using rifles for at least three generations.

Can't say the Texans were exactly shot to pieces, they suffered less than 20% total casualties. OTOH the Kickapoos gave worse than they got, and the Texan surprise attacks were swiftly blunted by accurate and effective rifle fire. At any rate, the Texans faced a long and miserable walk home.

Funny how this whole episode seemed to disappear entirely from Texas popular history...

An interesting "what if" to contemplate being "what if it had been Kickapoos beseiging Adobe Walls and not Comanches?". At the very least, things probably woulda turned out different.

Birdwatcher

Flash back to the 1760's; a vivid account from Ben Franklin no less, concerning tbe construction of Frontier forts along the Delaware River about the time of Braddock's catastrophic defeat. At that battle the Recoats beng methodically picked off by a mostly Indian and most-likely rifle-armed force....

http://books.google.com/books?id=95...=0CCEQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false

Just before we left Bethlehem, eleven farmers, who had been driven from their plantations by the Indians, came to me requesting a supply of firearms, that they may go back and fetch off their cattle. I gave them each a gun with suitable ammunition.

We had not march'd many miles before it began to rain and it continued raining all day; there were no habitations on the road to shelter us, until we arriv'd near night at the house of a German, where, and in his barn, we all huddled together, as wet as water could make us.

It was well we were not attack'd on our March, for our arms were of the most ordinary sort, and our men could not keep their gun locks dry. The Indians are dextrous with contrivances for that purpose, which we had not. They met that day the eleven poor farmers above mentioned, and killed ten of them. The one who escaped inform'd that his and his companions' guns would not go off, the priming being wet with the rain.

..and from that same account a cool example of Native woodcraft, most likely Delawares...

We met with no Indians [while building a fort], but we found the places on the neighboring hills where they had lain to watch our proceedings. There was an art in the contrivance of those places, that seems worth mention.

It being winter, a fire was necessary for them; but a common fire on the surface of the ground would by its light have discovered their position from a distance. They had therefore dug holes in the ground about three feet in diameter, and somewhat deeper; we saw where they had dug with their hatchets cut off the charcoal from the sides of burnt logs lying in the woods.

With these coals they had made small fires in the bottom of the holes, and we observ'd among the weeds and grass tbe prints of their bodies, made by their laying all round, with their legs hanging down in the holes to keep their feet warm, which, with them, is an essential point.

This kind of fire, so managed, could not discover them, either by its light, flame, sparks, or even smoke: It appears that their number was not great, and it seems they saw we were too many to be attacked by them with propect of advantage.

Charcoal fires in pits, and dry feet. I will say that digging a three foot-deep hole in the rocky hilltops in that area seems like no mean feat, perhaps he meant the slope.

Birdwatcher

Mike have you read the account of Herman Lehman?

Excellent thread. I learned much.

Actually, almost all Texas tribes committed atrocities against the white settlers. They thought of the new arrivals as a novelty at first, good for slaves, cool stuff and basically a "good time". Not just Cherokees...my bad.

Have to disagree. Many ethnic groups were much worse than the Europeans when it came to wanton blood shed
Gengis Khan, Pol Pot and Stalin made the Comanches look like girl scouts.

Book sounds interesting will order it.

Thanks . Very informative

By the Texan era, no Cherokee in their right mind, nor any other displaced Eastern Tribe, would view Whites as a "novelty". Hatred maybe, with abundant cause, but not novelty.

Then too, every Texas tribe would be generally aware of the looming tidal wave of Whites, so fast were the times changing.

An elderly Delaware matron in Texas in 1820 could easily have been born on the Alleghany River in Western Pa. in 1760, or even on the actual Delaware at the Water Gap (about 80 miles from Manhattan Island) in 1750.

Her children would have been born in the Ohio Territory, their children in Missouri or Oklahoma, the stories of all three generations a litany of pretty much constant loss and massive tragedy. Weren't just that they had to move, but also that a return to remembered haunts was out of the question; if they weren't shot out of hand at the very least they would find the whole place gone under.

Ain't nothing that engenders bitterness quite like the thought of a lost Homeland.

Neither by that date was the connection between Whites and catastrophic disease lost on the Indians, the Comanches reportedly excluding White traders for that very reason (the Delaware seem to a large extent have taken up the slack as traders).

Had to be patently obvious to the Comanches and Lipans, who had watched the San Antonio Missions fail mostly on account of most all the Native congregations perished, more than once.

Meanwhile, not mentioned by Gwynne or Fehrenbach, those same Comanches were making treaties with the Spanish in San Antonio as early as 1800. Good-faith treaties, at least by some bands wherein livestock raided by other bands was returned. In fact, so prosaic is REAL Comanche history that it makes flat boring reading.

And note the term "settler"; from a Native point of view surely that puts things in a whole different ball game. Sorta like if diseased illegal immigrants were moving here, a few at a time at first, and then in waves, taking over the whole place.

Specific to the Parkers, one thing most all accounts fail to mention is that by 1836, their fort on the Navasota was just two years old and during that time had been used at least TWICE as a staging area by Ranging Companies to go against surrounding Indians.

Doesn't make any difference to the Cindy Ann Parker story maybe, they could have just as well fallen victim in a reg'lar cabin or something, but it IS relevant to the story, and odd that the exceptional history of that place is generally ommitted in accounts.

Yet, once again the people who actually LIVED with Indians mostly sing a different tune than your'n. This holds true even up to and including the Apache Wars, and the likes of Lieutentants Gatewood and Davis.

I already mentioned Sam Houston, even RIP Ford speaks little ill of Indians (nor Mexicans either) and he warred on them pretty often. In fact, as Gwynne notes, he referred to his Caddo allies in the 1858 Comanche campaign as "men of more than ordinary intellect who possessed minute information concerning the geography and topography of that country".

Ford was one of the most remarkable men of his era and, like Smithwick, gives the lie to the old Frontier stereotypes. His "Old Reliables" in the War Between the States that WON the last battle of that war were largely Texas Hispanics (AKA "Mexicans") and his literal right-hand man in many close scrapes with Comanche war parties was his scout Roque; a half Mexican-half Comanche hisself. Ford wonders aloud in his memoirs just why Roque would have it in so hard against his own people, but apparently never pressed him on that question at the time.

And finally let us not forget Meusenbach's Hill Country Germans, who even Fehrenbach has it, and both parties still believe today, that these people were famously spared by the supposedly intractable Comanches, but who WERE murdered in numbers just a few years later by the Confederate Home Guard.

Hey, aint gonna change your mind I know but way-cool info nontheless

Birdwatcher

Comanche Empire, by Pekka H�m�l�inen is good, but written in Academic language (or maybe just very formal English). Fairly recent, too (2008)

Sycamore

You are correct, as usual. I meant Comanche, not Cherokee. I didn't think Cherokee ever came around. I was refering to the indigenous tribes of Texas. With few exceptions, they bore little resemblance to the farming, gathering tribes of the east.

The Eastern tribes have fascinated me and lately I've began to study them more. What I am learning and was only dimly aware of in the past is how, for lack of a better term, "civilized" they were. I had known that they farmed and lived in settled communities instead of teepees like the plains indians, but I had never really grasped the full depth of it. Not only did they live in towns, but many in many of these towns they had actual cabins with streets. And in some of the towns closest to the British trading posts, some of the chiefs actually had cabins with glass windows and furnishings and goods imported from Europe.

That knowledge brings a whole new perspective on things. Part of this was undoubtedly due to the fact that by the late 18th Century they had been living cheek to jowl with whites for the better part of 200 years and as a result, they had adopted some of their ways. But, a bigger part of it was that they were simply more advanced than we ever think of North American Indians being when we think of them today.

Had they been able to unite more effectively as a single force and had their British allies been more constant and reliable, they may have been able to hold white immigration in check and if they couldn't force the whites back across the mountains, at least they may have been able to carve out a large territory for themselves in the East. It wasn't, as it seems today, a dream necessarily doomed from the start. It could have been done.

It certainly could have been done IF the various tribes and confederations had been able to overcome millinea of mutual hate and distrust of their neighboring tribes and confederations.
Somehow I doubt that could have been accomplished though.

It actually came fairly close. The tribes all recognized the danger. It wasn't so much their mutual distrust and hate that got them, it was that they had differing ideas on how to deal with the white threat. Some wanted to fight to the end, some always wanted to move west as long as there was land there to do it, and some wanted to try and live in peace with the whites and not move. Usually, they would unite and then a defeat or a setback would fracture the coalition. Just another victory or two here or there would have gone a long way towards cementing the various confederacies that arose between the Indians.

If you ever have the opportunity, go to Cherokee, NC. and learn about the tribe. Those of the Eastern Band of the Cherokee, in the Cherokee, NC. area their ancesters fled to the mountains versus being rounded up and relocated to the West when gold was dicovered in N.GA. There's also places in SE.TN. & N.GA. that has a lot of history on the Cherokees.

Some of your Western Tribes, along the WA. & OR. Coast and Columbia River were traders with the British and lived a prosperous life also.

"Lo,the poor Indian".

"Lo",that mythical creature dreamed up by eastern journalists is still very much alive and kicking here on the 'fire,Boggy.You are wasting your time.

Mike, the Dove Creek fight was certainly an "atypical" Indian fight, if you only look at the fights with Comanches (cavalry fights), since it was more of an "infantry" fight. Thanks for the link.

One of the things Gwynne's book described so poignantly was the fact that even after the invention and implementation of large-caliber revolvers and highly mobile tactics in Texas Ranger forays against their Comanche light cavalry opponents, the lessons were repeatedly forgotten and every ten years or so Texas militias ventured out again against Indian foes with cumbersome weapons, unsuitable mounts for plains operations, and utilizing Napoleonic tactics, which inevitably gave all the advantages to the Indians and resulted in catastrophe for the whites. Only after getting their noses bloodied severely did the whites "rediscover" the lessons of earlier generations of Rangers. Talk about an example of ignorance of history and being doomed to repeat it!

When you speak of Rogers' Rangers, are you referring to Robert Rogers and his feats of arms in upstate New York and New Hampshire in the French & Indian Wars? I just picked up an interesting history of Rogers last week (War on the Run), and it's truly fascinating. FWIW, the idea of building a bivouac fire in a hole in wintertime and sleeping with one's feet in the hole to keep them thawed during the night was described by Rogers, but I expect you already knew that. The concept makes a lot of sense to me... first, you can cook/warm food and water/tea (essential for subzero weather survival during a weeks-long expedition) while keeping the light signature of your camp low, but perhaps equally important, you can dry out wet moccasins and socks every night.

Sorry, I disagree with you on that supposition.

First, they didn't have to "carve out a large territory". They had it already. The Iroquois confederacy, for example, trapped and hunted and farmed a vast territory which encompassed most of modern day New England, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and parts of Wisconsin, as well as southern Quebec and Ontario. And they lost this vast holding over the span of less than a hundred years.

Second, the British were rarely allies of the eastern tribes, and never allies of the Iroquois confederacy, nor the more westerly tribes such as the Sauk, Fox, Chippewa, and Ojibway. The French, on the other hand, worked hand in hand with these tribes and were staunch allies. Hence, the "French and Indian War". But although the French were allies of the Indians, they weren't really interested in doing anything more than getting rich off them by means of the fur trade. They didn't particularly care to "civilize" the Indians beyond what was needed to encourage trade. The French Jesuit missionaries did much to spread Christianity to these tribes, but you would hardly be able to call that a civilizing influence. The British colonies, by way of contrast, were land-hungry and never particularly interested in anything the Indians had other than their lands. The northeastern Indian tribes had the misfortune of not having the mindset or experience to recognize the threat to their survival until it was too late.

But the third and most compelling reason the Indians could not have pushed the Europeans back into the sea was that there weren't enough Indians to start with to do so, and once European diseases such as smallpox, measles, and diphtheria spread among them, their populations dwindled mightily. Birth rates could not keep up with mortality, and further populations losses due to war were the eastern tribes' death knell. It's well-documented that the Iroquois' traditional torture-and-murder of all captives significantly changed during this time period, and captives became seen as having value if incorporated into the tribes to try to increase their supply of breeding women and men who could wage war. Moreover, by the mid-1700's Scots-Irish immigration was really picking up steam, and the ratio of white immigration to Indian birth rate was likely close to 100:1. The net result was that between 1650 and 1750 the population balance in eastern North America reversed, with whites becoming the overwhelmingly dominant demographic.

Immigration and disease doomed the eastern tribes' hegemony over the eastern woodlands. War was only the final straw.

When did I say anything like that? No one, not even the Indians, ever thought that was a possibility.

No, what I was talking about was a large Northwest Indian territory maintained by treaty and force of arms much like the one demanded by the British as a condition for the end of the War of 1812. Had the British remained more constant, or not have suffered a couple of setbacks in the last months of the war, it very likely could have been a reality.

Once that happened, white settlement may have been diverted around that territory to other more easily taken areas.

And certainly, the British were the allies of the eastern Indians against the Americans.

Hi Bob, hi Birdwatcher, hi ET,

Thank you make me known about this book, brought it from amazon, a must read for all people interested in history of the frontier.
Will order the other titles you gave me.
Cheers
Dom

okie mentioned "The Last Captive". The lives of Herman Lehmann. Captured by Apaches and later traded to the Comanche. A good read by A.C. Greene.

well, I can attest that your fowler is hell on water bottles....for Comanch, give me an AR...or a Ma Deuce, please.

It seems the early settlers of Texas missed the benevolent indians...you know, the one's who passed out turkeys and daughters. History has been changed via PC again.

that's just because the Texians were mean to them. The Comanch were all sweetness and light until those mean old Texians spoiled them.

I mean, just ask the Spaniards...or the Mexicans....or the Apaches.

What happened to the winner writing history? Crap...Walt Disney is about as good as the rest.

history has actually been pretty kind to ol' Quanah, if not to the rest of his tribe.

Comanche life was just one really long outdoor anatomy class. Butchering meat was a daily chore like going to the grocery store, you know, women work.

Making the gene pool a little deeper is never a bad thing. The rest of his tribe? Animals. Savages that needed putting down.

I see your point. Yes, a large reservation might have been established following the war of 1812, but I strongly suspect it would've had no more success than other reservations and treaties established elsewhere in North America. Remember, the Canadians (who were "British" 100 years longer than the "Americans" were British) didn't do much better than the USA when it came to settling "the Indian question".



You're speaking of the Revolutionary War? The War of 1812? I'm not sure you can characterize the utilization of irregular Indian warriors in either of those conflicts in the same context as the French did in the F&I Wars, when they were true allies of the French, but I'll concede the British did a good job of capitalizing on the relationships previously established by the French.

reading this i kind of think of the southern part of arizona and mexico

Nous somme tous des Sauvages!

BN

Les conneries.

I'm twenty chapters in.

Hard to know really, tho' one could draw a lot of analogies between the Caddo Confederation and the famous Eastern Tribes, this true of almost any agriculutural Texas group. Even tbe infamously cannibalistic Tonkawa might have eaten less people than the Mohawks did in their day.

Even though we know it is so, it is still hard to wrap one's mind around the impact and scale of the epidemics. From an estimated TWENTY MILLION deaths in Central America alone in the sixty years after Cortez, to the piles of bones encountered by the Pilgrims ("like a new Golgotha") up in Massachusetts.

Subsequent to the Florida-to-Tennessee De Soto Expedition in the Sixteenth Century it has been estmated that Native populations of entire Southeast at the time of our own Frontier 200 years later were still only about 20% of what they had been when De Soto arrived. The Cherokees and the Creeks both assembled themselves as identifiable Tribal entities from the remnants of the first epidemics, neither being present as "tribes" at first contact.

Add to that the exponential nature of the American population increase: That hypothetical 70 year-old Texas Delaware woman in 1820 could indeed have been born 1,400 miles away on the Delaware, just 80 miles as the crow flies from Manhattan. Most all 1,400 miles between there and Texas being occupied by White folk in that seventy year period.

HER hypothetical 70 year-old grandmother back on the Delaware (who would have been born in 1680) would have had the frontier move back about a mere 150 miles or so in her own lifetime.

Hard to say WHAT the Texas tribes would have been like compared to the Eastern, by that time they were decimated by a further 70-80 years of diseases and faced with a regular steamroller of White settlement.

Earlier in history, when the Frontier was more static, there was a huge amount of peaceful cultural exchange occurring between wars. Hence by the mid-18th Century the aforementioned Eastern tribes were living in wooden cabins, sometimes of sawn lumber, with actual glass in the windows and stone chimneys. Their tools, farming implements and weaponry too were about on a par with the White side of the Frontier.

All this as a result of decades of peaceable exchange and some degree of intermarriage.

This process resulting by the 1820's in such famously literate and organized Tribes as the Cherokees (between bouts of White baby tossing when Houston weren't around I mean). The most remarkable result of this process though I am aware of is a written pact of solidarity between the Onieda Indians of New York State and their Palatine German neighbors.

http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/nyh/89.2/preston.html

The outcome of THAT relationship being the Oneida's actually splitting from their own League of the Iroquois and siding with their Colonial neighbors during the Rev War, largely on account of their by then 60-year bond of friendship with the Palatines.

By the 1830's however, the Frontier was moving at breakneck speed, an abrupt avalanch of settlement, crushing everthing in its path. And a bewildering array of tribal remants getting flattened here in Texas. In 1837 the Indian Affairs Commission of the fledgling Texas Republic identified the following Indian tribes as residing within East and Central Texas...

Abadache, Alabama, Anadarko, Ayish, Biloxi, Caddo, Cherokee, Chickasaw, Comanche, Coushatta, Delaware, Huawani, Ioni, Karankawa, Kichai, Kickapoo, Lipan, Menomini, Muscogee, Nacodoche, Pawnee, Potawatomi, Shawnee, Tawakoni, Tonkawa, Towash and Waco.

Good luck in weeding out the natives.

As for what is was like to be an Indian in East Texas in those years, the Sabine strip was long a famously lawless place, and with hordes of White folks on top of everything else moving in constantly, anything could and did happen, most of it awful.

Fer example what REALLY set off the Caddos was the killing of their prominent head man Canoma, who, while retrieving stolen horses for one Texas settlement, was tied to a tree and shot by the Ranging Company from another Texas settlement, one of these Rangers cutting a razor strap from the skin on his back.

No more surreal really that what came out of Parker's Fort. At least three expeditions by mounted Ranging Companies from that place, which at one time housed SEVENTY-SIX inhabitants. Reading up on these expeditions one gets the distinct impression the Ranging Companies basically shot whoever they ran into (see "Savage Frontier: Volume 1 1835-1837" 2002). Pretty uch exactly as they would do in Mexico during that war.

Ordered at one point NOT to attack the Wacos, the Parker's Fort crew did attack at least one bunch and capture a Waco mother and child. That night the despairing mother killed her infant then stabbed herself. In the morning the Rangers, finding her still alive, cut her head off with a butcher knife. (Relevant to point out here that accounts have Wacos along with those Comanches that plundered Parker's Fort the following year).

Most surreal of all, one of the Ranging Company operating out of the Fort claimed he had a smallpox sample, so they captured a guy from some unidentified tribe, injected him as best they could, and let him go.

Like other putative or otherwise actually documented efforts towards that end along our Frontier, it is hard to tell if it took hold. Indians were dying so fast from diseases anyway it would be hard to beat Mother Nature on that score.

Anyhoo... funny how Fehrenbach and Gwynne both skip that part.

Birdwatcher

If you read the accounts of DeSoto's expedition through what would later become Arkansas, it is clear that there were sizable indian villages every few miles. The rural population might not have been that much less than it is today. By the time the first traders and settlers started getting there in the 18th and early 19th centuries, it was practically a wasteland as far as human habitation went. There were very few indians and vast amounts of game.

Historians, even historical authors, skip stuff regularly. Which is why I try to read several authors on any historical subject. It takes time and several viewpoints to come up with what I can consider a relatively true and accurate picture of a historical period and place. If Gwynne has presented a slanted picture of events in "Empire", he at least opened my eyes to aspects of the history of this part of the world that I had no clue about before, and has piqued my curiosity to the point where I want to read and know more.

Careful, turns out Smithwick (seen below) was a PC apologist fer the Disney Channel (prob'ly no accident he ended up in California).



I mean he partnered with a White guy who had married a Black woman, lived with Comanches, rode with Cherokee, and the Lipans who rode with Jack Hays used to hang out at Smithwick's gun shop. Nary an attempted smallpox infestation or razor stropping or head removal at all. Even had the nerve to call a fresh In'jun scalp a "loathsome trophy" and says that his attempted recapture of some runaways slaves was "the meanest thing he ever did".

To top it all off, the wrote THIS...

The storm abated on the fourth day, but the snow had obliterated the Comanches' trail, so I took a Lipan and went on in the direction they had been heading. We kept on up the Colorado on the east side till near the mouth of the San Saba, when on ascending a rise overlooking the valley, we saw smoke rising some miles up the San Saba.

The Indian said he knew it was from camp fires because it ascended in columns; if it were prairie fires it would spread out in clouds. He said it was no use to go any farther, as he knew exactly where the camp was located. It was then late in the day, but not caring to tarry, we turned back, riding on far into the night.

While riding along about dark we heard a wolf howl behind us. My guide stopped short and assumed a listening attitude. In a few moments another answered, way to the right. Still the Indian listened so intently that his form seemed perfectly rigid. Then another set up a howl on our left. "Umph, lobo," said the Lipan, in a tone of relief. I can't say that I admired the music of the wolf at any time, but it certainly never had a more unmusical sound than on that occasion, and when I saw that even an Indian's ears were uncertain whether it were wolf or Comanche, I felt the cold chills creeping over me.

Some distance ahead we entered a cedar brake, just in the edge of which we came upon a turkey roost. We had nothing to eat, so with the approval of my guide, I shot a turkey. Securing our prize, we hurried on, putting many miles behind us before we ventured to draw rein. Several times I suggested stopping, but the Indian said "No; there was no suitable place." Late in the night we came to a dry ravine, and the Indian said we might stop.

Selecting a spot where there were no trees to reflect the light, he started a fire and prepared to roast the turkey. "You go to sleep," said he, and I was glad to obey the order, feeling perfectly safe in his care. At daybreak he roused me up to breakfast, having roasted the turkey while he kept guard. I doubt if he slept at all. A few hours' ride brought us into camp.


As if all that weren't enough, the poor deluded fool thought the War Between the States was actually about slavery.

Next.... John Salmon Ford: Secret Liberal.

Birdwatcher

Fehrenbach was channelling Walter Prescott Webb in tone and bias, but Gwynne's ommission is puzzling.

Anyhoo... I had thought "Savage Frontier Volume 1 1835-1837" was tedious before now, but now I want to get Volume Two.

Consider this quote from George Bernard Erath and twelve companions: January 7th, 1837 and its references to weaponry. Here they are, on foot, discovering a trail..

Their fires were still there; they had erected eight or ten shelters out of sticks and grass; each could shelter eight or ten men. The trail made a plain road, it was no trouble to follow.

An Indian, or an old hunter, could have told by the cut of the moccasin soles as to what tribe they belonged; but we did not have the art, and were perplexed on the subject.

It was agreed that if they were wild Indians we could manage them; but if Caddos, or the like, we might finds our hands full

The meaning of the quote being that Caddos, or the like, would be carrying rifles whereas the prospect of bows/clubs spears etc weren't that frightening....

Erath's men found the Caddo camp the next morning and did deliver a surprise first volley, afterwards being compelled into a rapid fighting retreat with the loss of two of their own, total Caddo casualties being about ten.

Of that action Erath writes... Had we all had pistols, or the six-shooters of the present-day we could have charged them and kept them running

But here we had a group of Indians on foot, leaving their fires burning and "a plain road" of tracks anyone could follow as well as talking loudly among themselves the next morning. Gotta wonder if they were travelling to raid at all.

Birdwatcher

Gwynne does a good job of pointing out the high casualty rate among the early Ranging Companies, about 50% a year. But given their aggressive tactics; commonly tracking and assaulting larger groups of Indians head-on, perhaps that is no surprise.

Also noted as per Gwynne how such an enviroment and such heavy casualties could further make them "een rougher, more brutal, and more aggressive".

Gwynn, like Fehrenbach, makes much of the arrival of the revolver in changing the balance of power, but I aint convinced. It is worth noting that, on the "official" inauguration of the revolver against Comanches at Walker's Creek in 1844, wherein fifteen Rangers attacked seventy-five Comanches (not unusual odds even in the 1830's, see Erath's account above), the Rangers at Walker's Creek suffered four men down.

IIRC three of those lived, but that surely was just by chance from not actually having been struck in a vital spot. And just as surely two or three Walker's Creeks a year could easily whittle Hays Rangers down by half, even with revolvers.


I do think one part of the Ranger legend is a tad overblown, re: the way the Texas Rangers travelled and camped. Gwynne writes....

Each man had a rifle, two pistols, and a knife. He had a Mexican blanket secured behind his saddle. That was all.

Like Comanches, the Rangers often travelled by moonlight navigating by river courses and the north star, and dispensing with fires altogether, making "cold camps" and eating hardtack or other uncooked rations.

Hays men would sleep fully clothed and fully armed, ready to fight at a minute's notice. They crossed rivers even in freezing weather, swimming by the side of their horses.

None of this behavior had any precedent in American military history. No cavalry anywhere could bridle and saddle a horse faster than the Rangers.

Pardon me, does no one else still make cold camps, eat uncooked rations and sleep with weapons at hand? Sounds about like any number of motorcycle trips I've been on, and any number of times me and the missus have crashed out in the woods.

Also, for the "none of this behavior had any precedent" part; I would say the ultimate of historical frontier military hardship that I know of was George Rogers Clark's taking of Fort Vicennes in February of 1779. CLark and his men basically marching through heavy rains across frigid, ankle deep floodwaters for more than 200 miles. Towards the end they traversed deeper spots up to their shoulders, and continued on for two days of this without any food at all, right before going into battle.

Amazing that ANY survived that ordeal to meet the British....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illinois_campaign


Of the Texas Rangers, what CAN be said is that they merely followed standard wilderness travelling procedures for moving though country where danger was expected. The same sort of things that men, women and children all over this continent had been doing forever.

Only us would make a production out of this.

Birdwatcher

Holy smoke! Found it...

re: Native marksmanship standards circa 1709.....

Our Indian having this Day kill'd good Store of Provision with his Gun, he always shot with a single Ball, missing but two Shoots in above forty; they being curious Artifts in managing a Gun, to make it carry either Ball, or Shot, true.

When they have bought a Piece,and find it to shoot any Ways crooked,they take the Barrel out of the Stock, cutting a Notch in a Tree, wherein they set it streight, sometimes shooting away above 100 Loads of Ammunition, before they bring the Gun to shoot according to their Mind.

A New Voyage to Carolina, John Lawson , 1709

Note... modern BP smoothbore shooters STILL do this today, tho' this is the earliest mention I am aware of.

Birdwatcher

I dunno, Mike. The fact that the duly constituted military authorities repeatedly sent large infantry units as well as standard (i.e., heavy dragoon) cavalry units out to fight the plains Indians despite repeated and documented failures using these tactics suggests the Ranger way was not orthodox by any means.

As for accuracy with smoothbores, I concur. Modern hunters have been brainwashed into thinking that only rifled barrels are accurate. Not true.

When I lived in northern Alberta I'd hunt ruffed grouse with a load of birdshot in one barrel and a slug in the second, because grouse season overlapped deer season on both ends. I could hit a paper pieplate at 100 yards 9 times out of 10 with that barrel and slug combo. I did take a forkhorn muley buck with that barrel, too.

The reason military smoothbores weren't accurate is because they generally just dumped the powder, used the paper cartridge for wadding, and then rolled the ball down the barrel. It was necessary for the ball to be smaller than the barrel in order to load quickly, so the ball just kind of bounced down the barrel. THAT is what modern people think of when they think of smoothbore muskets.

But you take the same musket and use a ball of the proper size with an actual patch around it, and you have a completely different animal.

In one of my books George Erath said his English wasn't very good. The only command he knew was "Charge, boys, Charge!" Erath County is up there between Comanche and Lipan Tx.

The large metropolis of Dublin is in Erath County, original home of Ben Hogan and current home of my aunt and uncle.

I just finished this book and recommend it as one of the best books I've ever read. Very well written...and very interesting. Amazing stuff that time in history....

Bringing it back around in case someone missed it. Thanks to DocRocket for recommending it in the first place. Excellent...

Elwood

Hey Doc, what I meant was, the Rangers were merely following standard common-sense modes of travel for most EVERYONE crossing hostile country; travelling fast, wary and light, actually not a whole lot different from the common practice of illegals trying to cross our wild country today.

One thing I'm ready to be disproved on here is the legendary and oft-quoted role of the Colt's revolver in Ranger hands in "changing the balance of power on the Plains".

I have got to dig up my much thumbed-through copy of Ford's "RIP Fords Texas", in it he gives a sober assessment of the revolver vs. the Comanche bow.

First off, most everyone here will correctly pronounce even a modern handgun as a short-range weapon even when deployed on foot from a two-handed Weaver stance. In the case of the Colt's revolver in the hands of Rangers the common supposition seems to be that the Rangers on running horses were somehow knocking off opponents at a distance.

Jack Hay's hisself acknowldeged the fact that revolvers were a short-range proposition at best with his famous command of "powder-burn them!" at Walker's Creek.

Where revolvers DO excel is in reports of exceedingly close-range actions, as in Hays at Walker's Creek in 1844 and the action of future Confederate General John Bell Hood on the Devil's River in 1857...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Devil's_River

In both instances the Indians closing to hand-to-hand range. The other instances being when charging a camp of an enemy caught by surprise, riding in and amongst the tipis doing rapid-fire execution (sorta like where Gus in "Lonesome Dove" "reads them from the book" in that famous scene where he surprises the renegade Comanche camp at night).

In his biography Ford states how Comanche archers fired purely by instinct, from a bow held flat, and how they could fire several arrows in rapid succession and with a considerable degree of accuracy hit another running horse at 100 yards and reliably hit a mounted opponent from 50 yards or less. Ford hisself puts the bow-mounted Comanche and the revolver-armed Ranger essentially on a par.

Which leads to the conclusion that a bunch of Rangers charging and shooting in the open at a full gallop about like the Lone Ranger and Tonto in the opening of that show would end up with quickly-emptied revolvers while suffering at least as many casualties as their opponents.

OTOH both Fehrenbach and Gwynn cite the famous 1839 incident where Ranger Captain John Bird found himself facing far-superior numbers as the textbook case of the supposed inefficacy of the rifle.

In that fight Bird and the thirty-one rifle-armed men in his company pursued a like number of Comanches out onto the open plain only to find themselves facing a whole bunch. Gwynne gives a figure of forty rangers vs 300 Comanches, Fehrenbach has fifty rangers encountering 200 Comanches, I myself tend to give credence to the "Texas History Online", it being put out by UT. That account gives thirty-one rangers vs. 300 Comanches.

http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fbi15

Frankly, per Fehrenbach I find the spectacle of FIFTY Rangers abjectly fleeing from just four times their number of Comanches to be a tad improbable, given the customarily near-suicidal boldness of rangers when facing superior numbers in other actions we know of.

Bird's REAL problems seems to have been that his horses played out, and that he turned and fled, inviting mounted attack from the rear by far superior numbers.

There are a number of printed accounts of rifle-armed Eastern Indians out on the Plains standing off and inflicting heavy losses against mounted Plains Indians even while both parties were engaged in the open... by dismounting and reserving their fire such that all the rifles were not emptied at one time.

Neither are guys on horseback with rifles necessarily immobile and static as those accounts espousing the virtues of the revolver are prone to state. Heck, in fiction I'll give you both Robert Duvall and Jason Patrick dismounting, rifle in hand, to take out mounted Indian opponents in "Geronimo, an American Legend" AND a dismounted Robert Duvall doing the same again against mounted Comanches in "Lonesome Dove".

Hays and his fifteen revolver-armed companions in 1844 at Walker's Creek suffered about 30% casualties while facing seventy five Comanches. Bird and his thirty-one rifle-armed companions suffered a similar casualty rate against three hundred Comanches while, like Hays at Walker's Creek, inflicting about SIX TIMES their own losses on the Comanches.

The only real difference being that Bird hisself died in his battle, one wonders how that fight would be percieved if he had not. Seems a safe assumption that the Comanches themselves would much prefer that either engagement never happened.

Furthermore, to the best of my knowledge, Hay's famous revolver victories occurred that same year of 1844, against opponents as-yet ignorant of the existence of repeating firearms, said Indians colsing on what they logically assumed were emptied handguns.

Birdwatcher

Your last sentence defines the early-on advantage of the revolver.

I'm not going to argue contrariwise. We know that small-unit irregular actions had been incorporated into North American military forces as early as the 1740's, with Rogers' Rangers being the most famous example (although the French had adopted the Indians' tactics a century before, and the eastern Indians had been fighting that way for centuries or longer!). So the adoption of such tactics by Jack Hays and his Texas rangers in the 1840's was not really innovative in the larger scheme.




Well, I'm not sure we can prove or disprove in retrospect the supremacy of the role of Colt's revolver in the conquest of Comancheria, but it did unquestionably help change the balance of tactical advantage. My library is still mostly packed in cardboard boxes from my move so I can't quote direct passages (most of my books are secondary sources and histories anyway), but more than a few authors have commented on the concept that the revolving pistol gave white men a weapon that allowed them to finally fight the Comanches on a more equal footing.

The Comanches were wizards with their short bows, as you've said. It seems that in order to be considered competent with a bow and therefore suitably skilled for war, a Comanche boy had to be able to hit a post while galloping past it at full gallop, shooting from under his horse's neck. The fact that a warrior could fire a dozen arrows in half a minute with that kind of accuracy put whites, armed with muzzle-loading single-shot pistols and rifles only, at a huge disadvantage unless they possessed superior numbers and fought on foot. Reloading muzzleloaders on horseback was highly problematic (but not impossible... I have a reproduction of a Frederic Remington painting of a buffalo hunter reloading his rifle at full gallop with a ball held in his mouth, a practice Remington observed many times). As such, prior to the advent of the revolving pistol, whites were at a distinct disadvantage in terms of weaponry.

Samuel Walker placed his order for Colt's revolvers in 1842 or 1843. There is some speculation as to how they were initially employed, but it seems Hays and Walker and their Rangers spent a lot of time training with the weapons before they were ever employed in combat. It seems they realized the revolvers were not very accurate, but were devastatingly effective at close range. Each Ranger carried two revolvers with two spare pre-loaded cylinders, giving him 10 readily available shots, more than enough for most close engagements, and another 20 rounds at his disposal if he chose to reload and re-engage the enemy. The strengths and limitations of the revolving pistols no doubt dictated the tactics Hays developed for battle. The Rangers would attempt to sneak in as close as they could to their Comanche enemies as they could, then they would charge into them, pistols drawn, and once inside effective range, twenty yards or less, they would open fire. A troop of 20 Rangers had 200 rounds of .44 caliber ball ready at hand, which could be discharged very rapidly. The effect on their enemies was devastating.

And yes, Gus's attack on the Kiowa renegades in Lonesome Dove was quite illustrative of that sort of tactic.

Changing cylinders wasn't easy or quick, therefore unlikely to have been undertaken in the heat of battle. I have some experience with this, having used black powder revolvers exclusively in my Cowboy Action shooting career over the past 12 years or so, and most of that with cap and ball revolvers. Even if you have pre-loaded cylinders at hand, it takes a minimum of two to three minutes to break the pistol down, remove the spent cylinder, mount the fresh cylinder, reassemble the revolver, and cap the nipples. If a Ranger ran out of ammo during a melee, he would have no choice but to holster his handguns and draw his sword.

Some people disparage the accuracy of the cap and ball revolver. Such people are simply ignorant of the capabilities of the weapon. I don't have a Walker Colt, but I do have a number of big pistols: a Colt 3rd Dragoon, a pair of 1860 Army revolvers and a pair of 1858 Remington revolvers (Italian replicas, of course, not originals) and I've trained with these pistols for years. I have found that because of their heavy weight and long barrels they can be fired very rapidly and very accurately, even while moving. The Walker revolver, being even heavier, would be a stable and very accurate weapon with which to engage enemies at close range from horseback. Furthermore, the flash, smoke, and roar of these big revolvers is impressive, to say the least, even when it's only a single Cowboy Action shooter taking his turn at the firing line; a troop of Rangers, all discharging their hand-cannons at once, would be terrifying to face.

The Colt revolving pistol may well have been the most important technical innovation in the Rangers' success against the Comanches, but I think it was the tactics Jack Hays developed for implementation of the revolver that was the real key to victory. He and his Rangers so impressed the Army in the Mexican War in 1848 that it became the model for light cavalry tactics in the Civil War, particularly among the Confederate guerillas. I have a photograph of one of Quantrill's raiders in which he displays no less than four Remington revolvers on his person. Confederate horse soldiers were known to carry as many as eight loaded revolvers on horseback. The records show that this was a highly effective fighting technique.

But where's the victories?

Colt Pattersons were fragile, Walker Colts blew up, so it aint surprising that they had a short service life. But by the late 1850's however all sources agree that the White male population of Texas was uncommonly well armed, with '51 Navy Colts being prominent.

So... THOUSANDS of Texans on horseback, well armed with revolvers..... One might assume that they would fan out across the Plains hunting down the steadily diminishing supply of Comanches with their game-changing revolvers.

Except they didn't.

In fact, far Comancheria remained as forbidding and deadly as ever to the unwary or unlucky traveller. Once again DESPITE the proximity of THOUSANDS of mounted Texans with revolvers.

Perhaps such variables as tracking skills, endurance, the quality and stamina of one's horses, and the ability to get within even long rifle-shot of any Comanches you might see trumped what you actually shot 'em with if you got within range.

Fehrenbach moves the Battle of Walker's Creek up four years to 1840 so that he can have the indefagitable Hays and his men harrying Southern Comanches everywhere out of Central Texas. Driving them in desperation to seek the treaty at the Council House. Didn't happen, at least not like that.

Gwynne, in contrast, presents the awful statistic of ONE HUNDRED Rangers alive in San Antonio in 1839 dead in combat shortly thereafter.

One hundred dead guys like that would be completely unsustainable losses for any Indian group. Indeed, the only way we could have done it was with a veritable population explosion behind the Frontier feeding an endless pool of young men, which is exactly what was happening.

Certainly, at least some of those hundred dead guys would have taken one or more Comanches out with them. But just as significant must have been a dawning realization on the part of the local Comanches that it didn't really matter how many White guys you killed.


(And read Ford ("RIP Ford's Texas), he goes into it in depth and puts the Comanche bow and the revolver at a rough parity, and this from a guy who started with Pattersons and later used Walkers in the Mexican War.)

Birdwatcher

It is unfortunate that the specifics of the first employment of revolvers against Comanches in a pitched fight seems clouded with uncertainty. At least most agree on the time... early June 1844, a still green and pleasant time down here, tho' this shortly transitions into at least three months of intensely sunny and hot.

Fehrenbach puts this battle in 1840 and has Hayes and fourteen Rangers charge through "a blizzard of Comanche arrows". That seems unlikely, given the vaunted accuracy of Comanche archers.

Likewise even with revolvers in hand Ford, who would know, puts the bow and revolver on parity, hard to imagine anyone charging through said blizzard on purpose even if the arrow was a tad less lethal than the lead ball.

Anyhow, all accounts agree... fifteen Rangers versus seventy-five or more Comanches. The Rangers were camped near to the Guadelupe River near the present-day hamlet of Sisterdale, today a pleasant spot on the road between Boerne and Luckenbach, like most everthing in that area slowly getting overrun by high dollar housing "estates".

Everyone but Fehrenbach states the Comanches tried to bait the Comances in to a charge, retreating to high ground in their rear and actually dismounting behind cover.

Interesting that, and counter to the Plains Indian "ride in circles around the wagons" stereotype. Perhaps these guys had already participated in a number of engagements wherin they charged guys with rifles, with disatrous results.

From here, accounts differ on what happened next, Gwynne in "Empire" gives a version based upon one presented in the Houston Morning Star newspaper based upon an interview with Hays. UT gives substantially the same account...

http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/btw02

...wherein the rangers enter a ravine just in front of the Comanche postion deep enough to hide them, and use it to flank the Comanches, gaining access the the back fo the Comanche line, at least partially dismounted on a hilltop. Sounds odd that the Comanches didn't anticipate this.

What happens then is a bit unclear, the rangers forming into a wedge and assaulting the hilltop, the fighting according to Ben McCullough becoming "hand to hand", dismounted or mounted unclear, but "attacks on both flanks" by the Comanches.

From there the fight devolves into a long chase, Comanches repeatedly turning to face the rangers only to be dropped by revolvers, the Comanche leader Yellow Wolf being finally dropped at 30 yards with the Rangers' last bullet.

I find this other account more credible, still involcing a ranger flankng attack as it does, and mention of ten Comanche bowmen having stationed themselves in cover on what they had anticipated would be the rangers' flank makes sense.

Note that rifles from cover was a usual prior Ranger battle tactic, suckering the Comanches within pistol range would be logical too...

http://www.classicballistx.com/HistoryWalker_Colt.html

When, at sixty yards distance from the band of Indians, he saw a second and a third rank behind the first, Hays wheeled and ordered his men into a stand of timber to the side. As
they approached the timber, concealed Comanches showered them with arrows. Hays plunged into the position, surprising a dozen bowmen who sprinted in flight for their horses.

Now in a defensible position, three Texans held horses while the others deployed to meet the charging Comanches.

The first line of Comanches absorbed a rifle volley then the main body raced to attack as the Rangers supposedly reloaded. But the Texans stood up and poured a hail of pistol balls into the startled Comanches. Warriors and ponies fell and the Indian charge was shattered.

Quickly, while the chiefs assembled their position at a distance, Hays� men reloaded their two pistols each
with their extra cylinders, charged their rifles and shotguns, mounted, and counterattacked....

During the fight, Sam Walker and his good friend R. A. "Ad" Gillespie were separated from the other Rangers and both suffered wounds from Indian lances.

Birdwatcher

bump

Doc, thanks for the recommendation---I finished it a couple of weeks ago and thoroughly enjoyed it. Keep the recommendations coming!!
Greg

Just got into the first few chapters of this book and WOW, I'm hooked. I gotta finish this one before deer season (Oct. 28) starts.

Uncommon warriors with a VERY different set of morals. Hard for us to understand nowadays. They didn't just do a few years of military service, they lived a warrior's life.

Thanks,

DocRoc- thanks for the review; I'll get it. Our past history intrigues me greatly. I often wonder when "out in the country" what was it like here 150-200 years ago?

For you and others who love this genre check out GREAT GUNFIGHTERS OF THE KANSAS COWTOWNS by Miller and Snell, THE OLD NORTH TRAIL by McClintock, GREAT WESTERN GUNFIGHTS by members of the Potomac Corral of the Westerners, and THE BUFFALO HUNTERS by Sanoz.

Woo hoo!!.... finally laid hand upon my copy of "RIP Ford's Texas", the actual first-person memoirs of a guy who was there; the Dean of Texas Indian Fighting hisself describing it as it was practised upon the Texas Prairies back in the days...

(though said prairies are beyond even distant memory now, Texas having changed in appearance with settlement possibly more than any other State).

Anyhow... lengthy to for me to transcribe but worth it....

In the event of being pursued, immediately after the preparation of depredations; the Comanches move day and night, very often not breaking gallop except to exchange horses (which they do several times) and water the caballada, until they deem themselves safe. Under these circumstances they will travel at least 70 miles a day, which is a long distance with the incumbrance of loose animals.

A party of warriors dressed in their trappings - embellished shields, fancy moccasins, long pig tails bedecked with siver, shoulder belts worked with beads and adorned with shells, fine leggings, ornamented cases for bows and arrows - mounted upon spirited horses, singing a war song, and sweeping over a prairie is a beautiful spectacle to a man with plenty of brave fellows to back him.

Their motions are easy and graceful. They sit a horse admirably, and manage one with a master hand. Charge them and they will retreat from you with double your numbers. But beware when pursuing them; keep your men together, well in hand, with at least half their arms loaded, else you will find when it is too late, the flying Comanches will turn on you and charge you to the very teeth.

A Comanche can draw a bow when on horseback, standing or running, with remarkable strength and accuracy. They have been known to kill horses running at full speed over one hundred yards away.

In the commencement of a fight, the yell of defiance is borne to you loud, long, and startling. The war whoop has no romance in it. It thrills even a stout heart with an indescribable sensation. The excitement of battle is quite as evident among these people as among others. Let the tide turn against them, send lead messengers through some of their warriors, and then the mournful wail is heard; its lubrigous notes are borne back to you with uncouth cadence, betokening sorrow, anger, and a determination to revenge.

Never ride upon a bowman's left; if you do, ten to one he will pop an arrow through you. When mounted, an Indian cannot use his bow against an object behind and to his right.

The dead are usually borne from the field. Nothing but the most imminent danger prevents them from performing the incumbent duty of not leaving the body of a comrade in the hands of an enemy. Over a fallen chief they will make a desperate stand. Their caution seems merged in the determination to risk everything to bear him from the field. To attain this object they will fight furiously, bravely, and often.

If they abandon him, it is usually in despair. Flight is no longer methodical and menacing to the pursuer. Retreat degenerates into route. After this they have seldom if ever been known to resume the offensive. They will hide themselves in the first chapparal affording security against discovery, remain during the day, and visit the dead at night, and if not able to remove them will spread blankets or some covering over them.

The bow is placed horizontally in shooting; a number of arrows are held in the left hand; the bow operates as a rest for the arrows. The distance - the the curve the missile has to describe in reaching the object - is determined by the eye without taking aim. At the distance of 60 yards and over, arrows can be dodged, if but one Indian shoots at you at a time. Under forty yards the six-shooter has little advantage over the bow.

At long distances the angle of elevation is considerable. It requires a quick eye to see the arrow and judge the whereabouts of its descent, a good dodger to move out of the way, and a good rider withal to keep in the saddle. A man is required to keep both eyes engaged in an Indian fight.


Birdwatcher

Just finished it. Fascinating. I do have some issues with it however, namely the author's disdain for the military (how one can even come close to comparing what Comanches did to their victims (see page 41 for starters) to even the most egregious acts of violence committed by US forces in Vietnam is a stretch and while there is no doubt as to the Comanche's fighting and endurance prowess, they were not by any stretch the Wehrmacht or anything approaching that. They were consumate warriors to be sure,but by Stone Age standards and once we broke their code, the end came fairly fast. Lastly, the kooks( READ: TRH& DD and the rest of the crowd) among us should read what I consider one of the best descriptions of Manifest Destiny I've read in a while, namely our western expansion was nothing more that empire building pure and simple, with the Mexican War as the quintessential example of a trumped up war as an excuse to gain about a 66% increase in national territory. Love the book.

Ol' RIP sure talked purty, didn't he?

No reason why a fire can't be lit under this thread so it can be ridden fer another ten miles or so.



Yeah he did, but he walked the walk and talked the talk.
Some photos, some better'n others.

First off, not too far from where I live, a familiar sight in Texas; one of those 1936 State of Texas historical markers, but this one more melancholy than most.



Marking the demise of one Moses Lapham, and ten stalwart companions. Like Hays he was a surveyor, a highly hazardous profession at that time and place. But apparently such wholesale mortality of young men was not uncommon in those years. Dunno what, if any, cost to the Comanches in this one.

http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fla37



In the background lies Leon Creek, modern Highway 90 following the course of the old Spanish road.

It looks green and rural in the shot, but appearances can be deceiving, Just about a half mile or so upstream lies one of the more notorious neighborhoods in this town. Downstream of this point the creek meanders across Lackland AFB and Kelly Field. Point of interest; a certain doted-on Corpus Christi pit bull was first located abandoned at that very spot, hanging around a pile of construction trash that had been dumped.

Nowdays there's "DO NOT EAT THE FISH CAUGHT HERE" signs all over; a legacy of decades of dumping along the creek. The marker too is surrounded by the shards of beer and wine bottles thrown against it. But in 1838 this was a fording place along the Camino Real, a forested strip running along the creek, said creek winding across across an open plain dotted with big old live oaks.

It was reportedly Comanches what did Lapham and his friends in, taking out the four of them and then maybe waiting for the rescue party the next day.

I wonder though what the REAL story was. This was in 1838, before the area was inundated with Anglos, and just five miles west of Old San Antonio, along an active trading route. I'm guessing at least some of the local Bexareno inhabitants prob'ly knew the Comanches were there.

Speaking of Comanches raiding in and around established towns, here's Ford's take on Comanche raids in the new settlement of Austin: Beginning in 1846, between two and five full years after Hays "changed the balance of power" with them newfangled revolvers, that a full 40 miles deeper yet into Comanche country west of Austin.

And here, after his extensive service with the Rangers in the Mexican War, IIRC Ford describes his own first actual foray against Comanches (weren't the last), here writing in his usual third person...

In 1848 Indian alarms were not infrequent in Travis County, and even in the city of Austin, the capital of Texas. In those days a gentleman seldom rode into the country any distance without carrying arms. It was not safe to ramble in the suburbs of the town unarmed.

Mr. Horst lived within the corporate limits of Austin. He was attacked by Indians on his way to market. Early in 1846 the writer noted hearing the "check" of billiard balls, the howling of wolves, and the yelling of Indians while he was standing on Congress Avenue.

Austin was a bona fide frontier town. The Indians had killed a goodly number of people within the city and nearby. The citizens would get together and make a reconnaisance in the adjacent country, usually with little effect.

Early in 1849 depredations were committed in various localities south and west of Austin. It was known that Indians often passed down the valley of the Colorado River, which was almost unsettled above the capital.

It was a known habit of theirs to go out by the same route by which they came in. A suggestion was made to raise a company of citizens, move up the Colorado, and endeavor to intercept the murdering marauders. John S. Ford was elected captain of a detachment of a little more than twenty men.

After having ascended the river about twenty-five miles, we found a fresh Indian trail. It was followed two days with a good prospect of overtaking the savages. The second day, in the evening, small fires were built and coffee made - a very indisrete proceeding.

At night a heavy rain fell. It was probable the Indians and whites were camped near each other. The redskins discovered us and left in a hurry. The trail could not be followed the next morning. The scout was not a success.


What was REALLY going on about that time was that the Comanches would be whupped later that same year by a massive Cholera epidemic brung out onto the Plains by the 49'ers, said germs carrying off most of the Southern Comanche bands plaguing Austin.

The usual story, first disease and then the unstoppable power of population demographics sweeping everything in its path. Even so, IIRC the Austin/San Antonio region would STILL suffer from occasion Indian raids as late as 1873, thirty years after Walker's Creek.

Birdwatcher

Thanks for the recommendation. Good book.

Birdwatcher and others,

I've read the book about Nelson Lee and his time spent with the Rangers and capture by Comanches. What are your thoughts on his story and how credible is it?

More photos, some better'n than others. As fate would have it, we had occasion last weekend to drive north out of Boerne Texas, up RR 1376 past Luckenbach clear to Hwy 290, 1376 roughly running along the route most likely taken by Jack Hays in May of 1844, scouting north from San Antonio in search of Yellow Wolf and his marauders, crossing the Guadalupe and headng up to the Pedernales (both of which rivers run roughly west to east at this point).

Here's a high point about forty miles north of Old San Antonio, looking north to the Guadalupe River Valley, that actual river five miles north from this point...



You can at least get an idea of the scale of the country and the distances covered. In 1844 this was a sea of grass, enough to swallow up any party of sixteen men, riding boldly out against unknown odds.

Nowadays it ain't nearly as wild as the photo suggests.

This is just thirty-forty minutes west of the Austin-San Antonio corridor, and most of the land here is subdivided, as much as anyplace I've seen say in Connecticut, Pennsylvania or New York. More'n anything too there's TREES, not big ones, but everywhere: What happens to prairies when you overgraze 'em and don't let 'em burn.

Here's the river itself from the bridge, cose to the old fording place, lined as watercourses usually are at this Southern latitude with bald cypress.

The river channel itself at least might look about as it did in 1844. We are in the grip of a tremendous drought though, and this river is the lowest I've ever seen it.



Just north of the river, the hamlet of Sisterdale, a wide spot in the road...



Nobody knows for sure where exactly Hays was when he went to bat against all them Comanches, but you might've been able to hear the fracas from here. This is a pretty heavily travelled road nowadays; minivans and SUV's passing up to the antique shops and restaurants of Fredericksburg, motorcycles heading for Luckenbach, and the occasion swarm of spandex-clad cyclists.

Apropos of not much at all, a party of zebras along the way. The Texas Hill Country is sorta like a zoo, never know WHAT you're gonna see, most of it available for shooting. But hey, paid hunts behind tall fences keep a LOT of Texas ranches open, and not subdivided like everywhere else.





A guy riding a steer amid the ruins of Luckenbach...




Awww heck, it ain't all THAT bad, the propieters of that hamlet striving mightily to preserve the character of the place as popularity and population slowly strangle it. Here's the famous post office/general store....




The old gas pumps have been gone for at least ten years, but people still sign the building. Its just that I remember the place from a quarter-century back, before the surrounding fields were parking lots, and when you couldn't get yer picture taken sitting on a beeve. We would leave the bar in College Station at closing time, ride most of the rest of the night to get to Enchanted Rock for the sunrise, eat breakfast in Fredericksburg, and then fall asleep with a beer under a tree at Luckenbach to the strains of talented musicians holding informal jam sessions.

Anyhow, apparently too there's still some cool bikes show up on weekends, check out this '37 (at least in part) Triumph...

[img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v148/Sharpshin/24hrcamp/luchenbach3.jpg[/img]

But, they were setting up for a wedding amid the live oaks along Grape Creek (more accurately the bone-dry bed of the same) and festooning the oaks there with a rainbow of colored ribbon. Dunno if it was to be a same-sex ceremony, but we suspected so given the history of homosexuals elsewhere co-opting cool locations.

As it would turn out, along the lines of that same suspicion, we headed east on 290 east of Fredericksburg, said highway paralleling the Pedernales, Hays' turn-around point in late May of '44.

In the last quarter-century a succession of vinyards have grown up along this route now, and we stopped in at one open for weekend "wine-tasting" to pick up a bottle to try that evening.

[img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v148/Sharpshin/24hrcamp/windery-1.jpg[/img]

We was disappointed on two counts.

First off, despite the cultured-looking crowd crowding the inside and hanging out in the shaded yard out back listening to some guy (actually pretty good) play guitar and sing, there were few actual bottles of wine to be had, just some small ones. So, contrary to my expectations it weren't like a liquor store, only with wine.

Secondly, at least half the clientele were women.... who apparently preferred the company of other women.

Some were quite attractive and the whole thing might have been somewhat titillating except for that vaguely hostile aura that generally surrounds actual lesbians, especially crowds of actual lesbians.

I expect if you could have stopped the action at Walker Creek that long ago early-June day, and showed both sides just what would be transpiring around those parts 167 years down the line....


Anyhow, I dunno if those girls were a regular thing, or maybe just on a field trip out of Austin or something, but we were happy to roll on down the highway to the LBJ Ranch, now a State Park.

And.. hallelueia! There we found a sight familiar to anyone around those parts 167 years ago...

[img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v148/Sharpshin/24hrcamp/buffalo3.jpg[/img]

The business end of an old bull....

[img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v148/Sharpshin/24hrcamp/buffalo5.jpg[/img]

Birdwatcher

Working from distant memory, the most diplomatic way I can put it is the elaborate "Comanche" ceremonies and customs described in detail by Lee are NOT supported by any other sources, contemporary or otherwise.

The gist seems to be that the book is a load of humbug.

Birdwatcher

Thanks for the input on Lee.

The pics are great and it sure is nice to put a visual on the terrain, especially for someone like me who has never seen this area. Thanks for posting.

Back to Nelson Lee. Did he even ride with Hayes and the Rangers?

If you had to reccomend a book or two about Jack Hayes or the Rangers, what might it be?

Nobody knows how much of his book was pure invention. Walter Prescott Webb, a renowned Texas historian wrote a foreward of one edition of Lee's book saying how well it described Ranger life.

Which would seem to indicate that Webb knew startlingly little about Indians, indeed his seminal work "The Texas Rangers: A Century of Frontier Defense" (1936) is light on specifics in that regard. Webb devotes 23 pages to a chapter on Hays, but devotes most it to the time the Rangers spent fighting Anglo and Mexican thieves and brigands.



I dunno that there IS a good book about Hays, the problem being so few records were kept as to the specifics of Ranger activities prior to the Mexican War, such that all we get are collections of anecdotes from the five years or so Hays rangered out of San Antonio.

These are all Texas classics, already mentioned here and worth a look...

The Texas Rangers Walter Prescott Webb 1936
Comanches: The Destruction of a People T.R. Fehrenbach 1973
Empire of the Summer Moon Gwynne 2010 (???)

..there's more mentioned on this thread, I just ain't read 'em. The latest and greatest Ranger book though is prob'ly one Steve NO clued me on to...

The Texas Rangers: Wearing the Cinco Peso Mike Cox 2008.

All contemporary sources, both Indian and White, testify to the remarkable abilities of John Coffee Hays. Cox does devote 20 plus pages to him, but is likwise reduced to anecdotes, best summed up by the following quote, pertaining to 1844, two months before Hays rode out after Yellow Wolf...

Though not yet at full strength, Hay's company rode that March in pursuit of cattle thieves. The rustlers had driven off nearly two thousand head of cattle and were believed to be headed north towards the Colorado River. If Hays caught up with the cattle thieves, the result did not make the public print.

(One wonders how one sneaks 2,000 cattle anywhere without leaving a trail plain as day, likewise one wonder how such thieves could hope to outrun any sort of pursuit.)

Given the anecdotal history of Hays from even the best sources, this account on http://www.theoutlaws.com/heroes2.htm is prob'ly as good as any.

Here's a quote from that last link that interests me, concerning the ubiquitous Delawares again, practically the phantoms of Texas history, they show up all over the place.

The time that Hays went hunting with seventeen Delaware friends to the Pecos River, he learned what it meant to live like the Comanche.

The eighteen friends traveled on foot, leaving their horses at home, hoping this maneuver would eliminate any temptation to the Comanche, who took every opportunity to steal horses. Reaching the river, they split into pairs for their hunt, but one member of the party stumbled into camp and said his partner had been killed by a passing band of more than 100 Comanche.

The Delaware and Comanche were bitter enemies, and a vote was quickly taken to overtake the Comanche before they could cross the Rio Grande, since both Jack and the Delaware were obligated to remain on the Texas side of the river. They took to the trail with the Delaware in a never-tiring trot from which Hays wearied at the end of the first few miles.

The Delaware and Hays ran for two days and nights, making only brief stops for food, drink, and rest, while the everlasting pounding of feet set Jack to wondering how much longer he could endure. Finally, he surpassed the point of no return, and his screaming muscles and depleted lung power somehow remembered his days at Davidson Academy in Nashville. He had run further than he had ever run before, but he had kept up.

At dawn on the third day, they attacked, surprising the Comanche, who ran frantically to the river to escape. It was a victory for the Delaware and Jack, who fought hand-to-hand with only a knife and tomahawk.

An extraordinary feat by anyone's standards: Eighteen guys carrying rifles and the equipment for the same run down 100 mounted Comanche raiders ON FOOT and put 'em to rout. Tho' nary a revolver in the bunch. Oughtta be a Texas legend, but it aint.

Birdwatcher

On the topic of flogging reluctant mules, this thread has some miles left on it

...got me to thinking on Noah Smithwick, in particular his account "from the winter of '37 or '38...

http://www.oldcardboard.com/lsj/olbooks/smithwic/otd15.htm

I can not just say when it was, but I think in the winter of 1837 or 1838, that Colonel Karnes, who was stationed at San Antonio, sent in for Captain Eastland to take his men out there, as the Indians were proposing to come in for a treaty, and Colonel Karnes, suspicious that it was a ruse, wanted to be prepared for any treacherous movement. Thinking it might have a good effect on my red friends, Captain Eastland invited me to go along as spokesman. Owing to the scarcity of money, the blacksmith business was not very remunerative, and one of the rangers, Isam M. Booth, offering to give me his time if I would take his place, I once more cast my lot with the Texas rangers.

The principal road in those days was the old Spanish Trail, the Camino Real, which ran from San Antonio through the present towns of New Braunfels, San Marcos and Bastrop, angling northeast to the old Spanish settlement of Nacodoches in far East Texas.

Smithwick at the time, enduring "the scarcity of money" was called to San Antonio as an interpreter. To get to San Antonio from Bastrop he would have decended the Camino Real.

Worth noting here that this was ghe exact same route travelled by Davy Crockett and his companions en route to martyrdom at the Alamo.

In all my years here I had never bothered to trace Smithwick's route, although the Camino Real remains today as Nacodoches Road, angling from above downtown off Broadway northeast along secluded roads to New Braunfels on the Guadalupe, thirty miles north from old San Antonio.

Took a long morning the other morning to set that right.

We went on out to San Antonio and struck camp, to wait for the Indians to come in. Several days elapsed and, nothing having been seen or heard of them, Captain Eastland, concluding that we were on a false scent, announced his intention of returning to Fort Coleman. On the day preceding that set for breaking camp I went into San Antonio, wearing a cloak with a gay lining in it, which so struck the fancy of a Mexican resident that he offered me a good mule for it.

I accepted the offer and, returning to camp with my prize, Francisco, a Mexican boy who was with us, warned me that the animal had probably been stolen, and pretty soon there would come a claimant who would prove it away from me, that being a practice among them. Determined to outwit them for once, I sought Captain Eastland and, explaining the situation to him, asked leave to depart at once, and await the company at some point between that and home.

My request being granted, I saddled up my mule and, leaving my horse with the boys to bring on, struck out for home.


The thing to understand about this region is that it overlies the huge Edward's Aquifer, an artiesian formation in porous limestone underlaying most of the southern edge of the Texas Hill Country from Del Rio, 150 miles west of San Antonio to Austin, one hundred miles north.

Springing up, or formerly springing up from this huge formation are/were a number of major springs, these springs giving rise to the major trails or roads through this area and what became our major communities and highways.

San Antonio grew up around the five Spanish Missions moved here after they failed further east. The missions were moved here on account of the San Antonio River, and the San Antonio River is here on account of two major springs, now reduced to a trickle; San Antonio Springs and San Pedro Springs.

Folks may note that the San Antonio River still has some water in it, this is because significant water is pumped up from the aquifer into the hippo enclosure at the San Antonio Zoo, them getting first crap at it, as it were. This water is then routed around the zoo through various enclosures before flowing into the river channel proper. Maybe three miles downstream part of this flow is dammed to form the riverwalk.

Heading out from Old San Antonio then on that slow mule, Smithwick would have first ascended either the east or the west side of the river to the San Antonio Springs just north of the present zoo, and then headed out on the Camino Real proper.

During their eighty years of operation, more than fifty miles of acequias (irrigation ditches) were dug to serve the mission fields, the oldest streets and property lines laid out along the lines of these acequias, even though in most cases the ditches have been filled in for about 100 years now. They were still all in use in the 1830s though the missions were all inactive by that time.

One the east bank of the river, one acequia ran more or less straight south to from the river headwaters to the Alamo mission, conforming more or less to the route of present-day Broadway...



OTOH, if Smithwick had come up the west side of the river, he would have taken the road that meandered along THAT acequia, said road later to become the equally meandering N. Saint Mary's Street...



Either route would have put him about here, yet another spectacularly uninformative pic showing the river just below the ingress point of all that zoo poop water...



From there the route moves north along present-day Broadway through the upscale Burg of Alamo Heights, climbing the low hills that would later be called Alamo Heights to cross over from the San Antonio River/Olmos Creek drainage to the Salado Creek drainage, the gentle meanders of the road along this stretch giving away its age; the route was laid out by use, not by surveyors.

Alamo Heights today is notoriously upscale (said residents locally known as the "09'ers" after the zip code ending). In Smithwick's day it would have been open country, oak-studded prairie...



Maybe three miles after leaving the springs, and about five miles as the crow flies from the Alamo, Smithwick woulda descended from the heights to a flatter, gently rolling area, this about the place where the modern North Loop 410 passes east-west over the route (seen here looking downslope, the 410 overpass visible in the far background)....



Birdwatcher

always like to stop in at Luckenbach when I'm in the neighborhood....it ain't what it was forty years ago, but neither am I, I guess. summer before last I went by with my daughter on the way up to kayak and fish the Llano....it was pretty dead. couple of bikers (non-lesbian) and a truck load of aging cosmic cowboys having a cold Lone Star. Grace liked it.

I'm about 80 pages in, thanks for the recommendation.

"But, they were setting up for a wedding amid the live oaks along Grape Creek (more accurately the bone-dry bed of the same) and festooning the oaks there with a rainbow of colored ribbon. Dunno if it was to be a same-sex ceremony, but we suspected so given the history of homosexuals elsewhere co-opting cool locations"

Along about 1980 - it was AFTER Hondo died,for sure - the local JP or County Judge came outside the old store one Sunday afternoon and ordered one of the "local legends" to gather up a couple more pickers and come inside to provide music for a wedding he was officiating.

The jurist admonished the newly appointed band leader to play only the wedding march and "no shennanigins like last time".

As soon as the bride and groom had been properly pronounced as man and wife,the 3 piece band[I was NOT included]struck up Jimmy Buffets'" Why don't we get drunk and screw?".

One of the newly formed band's members was a guy just passing thru who had a Crown Royal bag full of harps in different keys and he was top notch Luekenbach quality for the time,which was plenty damn good.

There were so many really good musicians back then that I can't recall but a couple of them that really stood out from the rest.Everything was acoustic and nothing was pre-arranged.

It went to hell shortly afterwards.

Just bought it for my Kindle, looking forward to it.

Know the are well BW. My best friend's son lives in Uvalde and they have a hunting ranch out there near Fort Calrk. We routinely do that triangle from San Antonio north to Fredericksburg the west to Bracketville and down to Uvalde. I love it, wife hates it

Reminds me of a song about a drunken depressed man that called his ex to say he was going to fling himself off the bridge at Luckenbach. He didn't mention it was a 3ft. drop.

to dry gravel.

Yeah Steve it was pretty sad.

Not always, along with the decline of Luckenbach went the rain. I've stood on that very bridge and seen the largest school of baby bullheads I have ever seen (OK the ONLY school of baby bullheads I have ever seen) in the shallows below.

That might've been the year that the cute coed on the back of my bike got so drunk while we were at Luckenbach (all them bikers and cowboys buying her beers were "so nice" she said ) she threw up inside her helmet somewhere near Willow City while we were riding home. Usually it was me that did stuff like that. Mostly I'm glad she didn't fall off.

Birdwatcher

Thats the way I'm recalling it, you could ride in on your bike, sit and sip a Shiner Bock, and be blown away by the musicianship around them tables out back.

Now they have a stage back there and a live band playing on weedends at least. Must be that spectators like me came to outnumber the musicians too much so they had to crank up the volume, and I expect those bands are pretty good. But it aint even in the same ballpark as what went on before. I expect it aint a place to sit and improvise when you've got guys with amps on stage just fifty feet away.

It used to be a place you felt priviledged to be at.

Along the same lines we would often climb on our bikes at the end of the day to take in the bat flight out of the old railway tunnel near Grapetown, just about ten minutes away. Or five on a bike Past the Old German shooting range there are two steep and sudden drainages that when you hit 'em at eighty on a bike the earth drops away from underneath and you go airborne, same again when you clumb back out, and then repeat in the next drainage ten seconds on down the road

You could sit on the edge of the railway cut and be IN the bat swarm, feel the breeze off of their collective wings like it was a floor fan, and smell the reeking ammonia stink that came with it.

So many bats it was like special effects, and you could follow the progress inside the tornado by focusing on the albino bats in the swarm.

Then the state look it over....

...nowadays stern, uniformed, short-haired ladies of uncertain sexual orientation yell at you to keep quiet "to avoid disturbing the bats". An upscale restaurant now sits nearby where the entrance to the old hippie commune used to be, high dollar homesites further down that same road.

Birdwatcher

I just went to look for my book "The West That Was" by John Leakey the founder of Leakey Tx. Couldn"t find it, but it is a good read. The East fork of the Frio held up pretty well through this bad drought about 6-8 in. low. Leakey settled by the "big spring", I haven't been able to find it- private property. You all saw what happened to the Frio at Reagan Wells. Indians and black bear were still around, he was talking about herding turkey and hogs to Kerrville(60-70 miles?)

Leakey of course lies on the other side of Vanderpool Mountain from Vanderpool, the ride over being one of the pre-eminent motorcycle roads in the United States (or was; numbers, law enforcement, and packs of Harleys pretty much smothered it).

Rode it so many times back in the days I could still prob'ly do it blindfolded. One time I climbed off the Ninja long enough to peruse the old graves in the cemetery on the Frio at Leakey and was surprised to find the grave of Mrs McLaurin, victim of the last known Indian raid in those parts, April 19th 1881.

Not an old-time classic Apache raid really, just a woman and some guys robbing the cabin. Mrs McLauren surprised 'em in the act, they shot her and the fifteen year old youth with her, left the other kids alone, just a sad story all around....

http://www.unc.edu/~ecanada/hilton5.html

The Apaches also stole some stock up and down the canyon, a local posse took up their trail but lost it. Ten days later they brung in the Black Seminole Scouts out of Fort Clark who picked up the cold trail and followed it out through the Pecos County, crossed into Mexico and hit the camp of Lipans what did it. Killed a couple of guys, brung back an injured Lipan woman.

Birdwatcher

You would like the book. Leakey took a wrong turn or something and ended up in Montana for awhile.

I'll look for that book.

IIRC, 1881 weren't the LAST known Indian raid in Texas. I believe it was 1883 that a group of Mescaleros and Lipans raided from New Mexico clear to Mason County Texas, a very late date in that area in the history of the Indian Wars. I'm not recalling fatalities, just stolen stock. As usual they eluded the local posses.

Lt John Lapham Bullis and 29 Black Seminoles were called in, intitiating perhaps the all-time greatest tracking duel in the history of the West, IIRC twenty-nine days and, according to this Texas Ranger site, 1,000 miles.

http://www.texasranger.org/dispatch/Backissues/Dispatch_Issue_28.pdf

The Apaches made the safety of the reservation back in New Mexico just hours ahead of their pursuit, Bullis being denied juristiction there by the Indian Agent.

That whole episode oughtta be a Texas legend too....

Birdwatcher

With apologies to folks if this grow tiresome...

Smithwick made about eight miles that first day....

http://www.oldcardboard.com/lsj/olbooks/smithwic/otd15.htm



...and later, after losing his rifle in the Guadalupe and turning back wrote...



North of 410 where we left it, Nacodoches, four lanes wide, meanders for two miles past older neighborhoods, business and apartment complexes. The Salado running north-south maybe a quarter mile east.

Finally Nacodoches Road opens up on the approach to the creek, the creek itself at that point come from the northwest and then is directed south at the base of a tall bluff, visible in the background of this pic. One hundred and seventy three years ago the location of this pic would qualify for wilderness status today.



West (upstream) of the crossing of the modern roadway, the creekbed has been flood-controlled into oblivion.






On the downstream side of the road lies a park with soccer fields, the creek running through a band of woodlands at the base of the bluff, behind this landscaping business. Almost dry in this drought, mostly carrying runoff from lawns and such...






All that can be said with a certainty here is that the creek always turned south at the base of that bluff, but after more than 100 years of enclosed ranching and farming, and then another forty years of increasingly heavy urbanization, who can say where the mud in the creek came from or how much it resembles the prairie stream of 1838?

Another minor drainage (nowadays in a concrete ditch) feeds in here too. This spot is prone to flooding, and was likely often wet in 1837 too. Dunno if the road really did cross the Salado at this very place back then or where exactly Smithwick stayed overnight, but likely that tall bluff was a familiar landmark to travellers like Smithwick, and to them Comanches what tore through there the next morning.

Worth noting that, maybe ten miles downstream from this point, and maybe four years later, a major fight against Mexican troops would take place on "the prairie around Salado Creek"...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Salado_Creek_(1842)

Birdwatcher

These were the years when young men out of San Antonio were being knocked off by the scores, Smithwick musta really wanted to hang on to that mule. He made about twelve miles the next day, finally clearing the bounds of modern San Antonio...

http://www.oldcardboard.com/lsj/olbooks/smithwic/otd15.htm



North of the Salado, the rout runs more or less straight north, nowadays a major throughofare running through the North Side, climbing gently over what once was open rolling prairie...



About seventeen miles from downtown, the route passes right by a prominent hill variously known as "Comanche Hill" or today as "Comanche Lookout", a city park. The whole hill now choked with brush as this area gets when it ain't allowed to burn.

Its only about two hundred yards up a moderate slope from the road (which passes along the east side), hard to believe that anyone passing this way in those times wouldn't pause here to scout out the country, watch their back trail, or look fer signs of people who had been watching THEM.

Here's the view from the top looking south towards downtown (tall buidlings barely visible on the horizon)...



Heck, EVERYBODY passing that way must in those times must have stopped there, that goes double for folks rushing to the Alamo. My money says that Smithwick lingered there for a good bit too, watching for his friends to catch up.

Mostly power walkers and families up there nowadays, tho in the past I'm given to understand it was a notorious teen hangout.

I woulda like to check out the route northbound too but the city has not seen fit to clear the brush in that direction.

Another mile and you pass the outer loop (1604) and top over into the Cibolo Creek drainage, the creek crossing point about half a mile past the Rolling Oaks Mall.



Note the new housing development signs by the bridge, the expansion continues....



The Cibolo (Spanish for "buffalo") describes a wide arc north and east of Old San Antonio, forming the present county line for much of that distance. The first twenty or thirty miles of that arc run directly over limestone recharge features feeding into our aquifer such that the creek bed itself basically has two modes... bone dry and rocky as seen here, or raging flood after a tropical storm or some such fills it faster than it can escape underground.




The wispy greener trees in the pic are retama and mesquite, most of the grey stuff that has already lost its leaves is cedar elm. The green trees like in te middle of the creekbed just begining to brown off are Eastern Sycamores. Always a puzzle to me that this tree will grow in these places, must be that they have their feet wet.

Smithwick likely made camp somewhere in this area, maybe on the bank by a rain pool on the rocky creek bed.

Birdwatcher

http://www.oldcardboard.com/lsj/olbooks/smithwic/otd15.htm



It is about fifteen miles between the Cibolo and the Guadalupe, Smithwick was indeed keeping an "extremely moderate" pace. The remarkable thing is, he was still eighty miles from his destination at Coleman's Fort, the site of that structure being located on the east bank of the Colorado River in present-day east Austin.

A couple of miles north of the Cibolo at last you leave the four lanes and housing developements behind.

Here's the old road...



Brush, mesquite and cedar set in pretty quick around here without fires, so to get a prespective of the country more like it was back then you have to get up on high ground.

The hundred mile Austin/San Marcos/New Braunels/San Antonio Interstate 35 corridor still is one of the more rapidly growing areas in the US and open land is disappearing quick.
A broad valley runs north-south between New Braunfels and San Antone. The Old Nacodoches route runs up the western side, close to the Balcones Escarpment. Interstate 35 runs about a mile east, along the higher ground on the eastern side.

Here's a view from Interstate 35 south of New Braunfels looking east across Smithwick's route. Note that in his day there was scarcely a tree between San Antonio and Austin.



Somewhere along this route in July of 1840, perhaps 1,000 Comanches slipped down from the Hill Country to the west and launched their great raid on the Tejanos.

In more recent times, in 1983 Salem Bin Laden, eldest brother and reported head of the Bin Laden clan, died in this area when the ultralight he was flying hit power lines. Some accounts have suggested that had he still been alive, his younger brother Osama never would have been allowed to do the things he did.

Anyhoo... history passing away along the old route, who knows what stories that old store could tell...



...history preserved... St Joseph's Chapel, built in 1903 by local Catholic German farming families, restored just last year, tho the congregation is long gone...



..and history continuing... the Alamo Shuetzen Verein, one of four traditional German shooting clubs still extant in the Hill Country, the parent club having been founded just down the old road in New Braunfels in 1849. Check out the original rules Prior to 2002 shooting was done using only metallic sights with the exception of those over 70 years of age allowed to use a telescope.

http://home.roadrunner.com/~nbsv/index.html




Birdwatcher

Since my last post, the "Old Cardboard" Smthwick site has gone inactive Pity, that was a phenomenal resource, hope it comes back up.

Anyhoo, not as user-friendly, but available here...

When I left off, Smithwick had just arrived at the Guadalupe River...

http://books.google.com/books?id=8-..._r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false



Driving this route was an impulse deal, and I had not done any prior study or brung any means of accessing the 'net. Therefore I had no idea where the old Camino Real crossed tbe Guadalupe, I was thinking the road veered further east, maybe crossing the river below New Braunfels.

My thinking was this, in New Braunfels there are a set of springs called Comal Springs which give rise to maybe a two mile stretch of river (Comal River) that empties into the Guadalupe. My thinking is that Smithwick probably crossed below the Comal, but in all my years here I had never really explored that pretty town, tho it lies only about an hour away.

Accessing these two waterways aint as easy as you might think. This is Texas and, as always, most of these waterways wind between private land. So while I could FInd 'em easily enough, FOLLOWING them was a whole 'nother deal entirely.

First, a study in springs.

Just below that bridge (Hidebrand Ave.) lies the main San Antonio Spring, headwaters of the San Antonio River (above that the same channel forms an intermitted stream - Olmos (Elm) Creek). As you'll note, the springs have fallen on hard times, three million people drawing on that same aquifer will do that...



As previously stated, much of the present San Antonio River within the city limits comes from a well in the Zoo. In recent years that has been limited due to high E. coli levels in that water, nowadays the difference is made up with recycled sewage treatment plant water. Not a public health issue, but high in nitrates and phosphates with the attendant plant and algae growth that accompany that, as seen here just below the zoo....




So much so that they have to chemically control algae along the river walk proper.

A couple of miles away lies the other great San Antonio spring of days gone by.. San Pedro Springs...



Used to be San Pedro Springs fed a famous, clear pond, a classic swimming hole, and the most likely spot for a fictional Gus and Clara to pitch woo as recounted in Lonesome Dove. Turns out the dwindling pool was finally closed to the public in the 1940's on account of it had gone stagnant due to reduced spring flow, the pool being filled in.

In the nineties the city did a bang-up job of digging out and recreating the old spring-fed water hole, except using city water, note the original bald cypresses, still in place



An idea of what these two springs, and thus the San Antonio River, formerly were like can be seen by observing tbe Comal....





Seen here flowing clear and swift between high dollar condos and homesites. Crystal clear water, an even 78F all year round.

[img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v148/Sharpshin/frontierfolk/smith29.jpg[/img]

Comal Springs persists the way it does largely on account of endangered species protection limiting water use by San Antonio in times like the severe drought we are currently in.

Used to be that any landowner could draw all they wanted, and as San Antonio grew, New Braunfels and San Marcos found themselves faced with being left high and dry. An independent landowner south of San Antonio brough the matter to a head, his randomly-dug well hitting a main artery in the aquifer and causing an immediate and enormous drain.

The State put THAT guy on hold by denying him a wastewater permit to discharge the flow into the Medina River, forcing him to cap the well. Shortly thereafter the Endangered Species Act and the threat of Federal action was the club used by the state to put the aquifer in the public domain.

Birdwatcher

I was cruisin' this post for Christmas gifts (books).

I know the guy who sold Quanah's Winchester 1894 a few years back. Obviously the gun was owned and used well after the fighting days of his tribe were finished, but it was still historical, not only due to the attribution to its famous owner but also because he used it on a hunt with Teddy Roosevelt.

OT- Teddy Roosevelt's "Ranch Life and The Hunting Trail" is areally good read. Really.

Who knows how tall they actually were. I've read accounts of them being 7' tall and such and think that is probably bs. I was friends with one, a half-breed admittedly, and have known a few, living where I do in the heart of the old Osage nation.

The sight of the attack by the Osages on a party of Confederate recruiting officers, lay about ten miles from where we used to live. I think only one of the party of approximately a dozen-and-a-half, escaped and that was the kinsman of Merriwether Lewis, Col. Werner Lewis.

The Osages were mortal enemies of the Comanch and probably prevented many depredations along the Kansas-Missouri border by their presence in the Cross Timbers, which the Comanche and Kiowas raided into.

At any rate, back to their height, I'm pretty familiar with the Osage and while they are tall for Injuns, I've never seen one to know he was anywhere's near 7', even in platform moccasins, which were the rage during the Village People era.

As to their wealth, I don't know many that are what I'd call wealthy. Like a lot of the oil boys, they found it difficult to hang onto their wealth. A lot of them still get royalties though. The guy I spoke of did and he pretty much just played around all the time after he inherited it. heheh

http://www.amazon.com/Captured-Indians-Firsthand-Accounts-1750-1870/dp/0486249018

I have and have read the above. I'd recommend it.

http://www.abaa.org/books/268374772.html

The above is one of my most treasured possessions. Mine was evidently a school book of my Mom's as it has a lot of stamps from the state of Texas and writing of her's in it. It was in my Grandma's possession and she gave it to me when I was a little kid. It has an abbreviated account of Hermann Lehman's captivity in it, as well as other fascinating tales.

"A Vaquero of the Brush Country" also J.Frank Dobie. Just a gift idea.

WOO HOOO!!!! Smithwick is BACK, moved to a different site.

Read it while its still so accessible...

http://www.lsjunction.com/olbooks/smithwic/otd.htm

...of his 1837 or '38 winter trip Smithwick reached the Guadalupe, tried to ford it and him and the slow mule got washed away....

I let my mule take his own gait, which was extremely moderate, and about sundown reached the Guadalupe. In the meantime a cold norther had come on and, there being no timber on the west bank of the river, I thought to cross over to the east side, which was heavily timbered, and make another lonely camp.

The ford was an ugly one at any time, the current being very swift. Failing to observe that there had been a rise in to river, I plunged in, and almost instantly my mule was swept off its feet, and away we went down the stream. I managed to disengage myself from the saddle, dropping my gun in so doing, and losing my blankets, which I had thrown across the front of the saddle to protect my legs against the cold wind.

I hung onto the bridle, and, being a good swimmer, finally succeeded in getting my mule out on the same side we went in. Having lost my gun and got my powder all wet, there was nothing with which to strike a fire.

We had no matches in those days, the usual method being to take a bit of rag and rub powder into it and ram it into a gun (empty) and fire it out, the flash igniting the powdered rag. Sometimes we took out the flint from the lock of the gun, and with a steel, made for the purpose, or, in the absence of that, a knife, struck sparks into a rag or some other inflammable substance, into which powder had been poured.

But my gun being gone, I was left without any of these resources, and not a dry thread on me, the wind fast approaching the freezing point, and no shelter from it. By this time it was getting dark, and I was shaking with cold.

In this extremity I bethought me of one of Davy Crockett's stories. Stripping the wet trappings from the mule, I tethered him to a bush and set to work vigorously pulling the dry sedge grass, which was everywhere waist high. I mowed the grass in great armfuls, piling it against the windward side of a clump of bushes till I had quite a respectable sized haystack. By the time this was done my blood was warmed Up, and spreading my wet saddle blanket over the windward side of the heap, I wrung the water out of my clothes, crawled into my hay mow and was so warm and cozy that I soon fell asleep.

When I awoke it was getting light. I pushed the grass aside and peered out. There stood the poor mule, all drawn up, shivering in the cold wind, which was sweeping, unobstructed, across the prairie. I kept my bed till the sun got up, when I crawled out.

I had gone supperless to bed, and had nothing to breakfast on. I thought I might be able to recover my gun, knowing that its weight would not permit it to float. I went down to the river to look for it, and there it lay, under about six feet of water. There was nothing in the way of a drag obtainable, so I reluctantly abandoned it. With handfuls of grass I rubbed down my mule, and saddling him, took the back track, wondering whatever could be keeping the company back.

So for an hour or two I was casting about New Braunfels, wondering where exactly this happened. Like I said it had to be below the Comal, and I thought it might have occurred east of the present city limits.

Turns out though that finding "Nacodoches Avenue" running to the river clued me in, that likely being the location of the old Spanish Nacodoches Road AKA Camino Real.

Supporting evidence; the same rail line paralleling the route out of San Antonio crossed here. A short block east lay an old road bridge, preserved as a footbridge...



And at the other end I found this...



Turns out the old fording place was just a hundred or two yards west of the modern Interstate 35.

Here's the view looking upstream (west), now the site of an old mill wier, note the aforementioned railroad bridge...



...and downstream towards the access road and Interstate bridges...



There ain't any public access from the shore along this stretch but here is about where Smithwick fell in, and where a hundred heroes and other assorted reg'lar folk, villains and riff-raff crossed over the centuries.

In 1838 there were woods on the north bank, but nothing but open prairie on the south, saifd prairie stretching clear to Old San Antone.

Birdwatcher

Birdwatcher

That�s great history. It makes it even better when we can see the actual places that they crossed the plains, creeks and rivers.

I just received in the mail volume three of Stephen Moore's "Savage Frontier" series, this being "Savage Frontier Volume III 1840-1841"

http://www.amazon.com/Savage-Frontier-1840-1841-Rangers-Riflemen/dp/1574412280

This four-volume series has been sadly underserved by marketing. I have had Volume I for years, but did not fully appreciate the value until this thread. Moore's narratives at first appear chaotic, but this is largely because he incorporates and references a huge amount of detail glossed over in more easily readable works.

Case in point, the famous Council House fight of 1840, wherein twelve Comanche leaders came into San Antonio for a peace treaty, bringing with them just two captives, notably the unfortunate Matilda Lockhart.

From Moore we learn that the gambit of seizing the chiefs as hostages against the return of ALL White captives in the Comanche camps had been ordered among ther Texans from the first contact prior to the actual meeting, months in advance.

For those out of the loop, a quick primer on the Council House Fight can be found here..

http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/btc01

Just to throw in a photo or two, the actual council house meeting might have occurred here, in what is now known as the "Spanish Governor's Palace", one fo the few original Spanish buildings surviving downtown...





The old market square between that row of buildings and San Fernando Cathedral is now occupied by city hall. A WHOLE bunch of history played out here, including the very first public demonstration of barbed wire (1873?), bringing a whole new era to the West. For Lonesome Dove fans, this is wher Gus and Call would have met their second cook, the guy cooking grasshoppers, and the bar where they broke the bartender's nos would have been set adjacent.





Moore gives a detailed account of the first arrivals of Colt's patented weapons. At least one officer in the room when the fight broke out was, according to Moore, equipped with a revolving rifle.

And here, from the book, we have what really may be the oft looked-for "first" use of revolvers against Comanches, this at the Council House Fight (a full FOUR YEARS before Jack Hays and his men famously used revolvers at Walker's Creek), at this point the fighting that started inside the room had just spilled out into the street.

From page 28...

Colonel Lysander Wells, head of the army cavalry, carried one of the new Colt repeating pistols. Ill-trained on how to shoot this new pistol, the startled Texan had his wedge improperly placed and the gun would not fire. An Indian grabbed the barrel, jerked it loose, and left Wells cursing his luck and the new gun.

In the continuing fight, Wells fought hand to hand with his Comanche foe. He finally pulled one of his lap pistols and "fired into the Indian's body," killing him. Another of Wells' cavalrymen, young Henry Clay Davis, used his new Colt pistol to kill another Comanche who was wielding an arrow as a dagger.

So, I nominate Henry Clay Davis as first recorded to have used a Colt's revolver on a Comanche, tho' its true not on horseback. I just started the book, perhaps another incidence will arise. And it should be borne in mind that revolvers were already in use during that time in the Seminole War over in Florida.

...and maybe Lysander Well's as the first documented user of a "backup" pocket pistol when the primary handgun failed, a strategem that continues to occasionally save the lives of a few Cops up until the present.

As to Wells' Colt jamming on account of the wedge, just the other day I finally disassembled an Uberti Colt '51 Navy replica I've had sitting around unfired for years. Much to my surprise, when you tap the barrel wedge back into place, if you tap in in too far it will drive the barrel assembly back onto the cylinder, tying up the gun, as was likely the case with Wells's revolver.

I'm just glad I weren't wrestling with a wild Comanche when I found that out...

Reading further, most histories go from that fight to the incidence of 200 infuriated Comanches surrounding the Texan garrison at Mission San Jose, and then leave off entirely everything between then and the Great Comanche Raid under Buffalo Hump some months later.

Moore OTOH describes at least five separate occasions in the aftermath of the Council House fight where two indivudal Comanche leaders came in to trade White and Mexican captives for Comanche women and children held captive by the Texans, on one ocasion Texans even riding out to the Comanche camp to choose the captives to be traded (thirteen captives had already been horribly tortured to death in the immediate aftermath of the fight in revenge by the Comanches).

Said individual Comanches were reportedly well-known by the inhabitants of San Antonio, indicative of interactions and commerce between ordinary San Antonio residents and the Comanches before these events.

Birdwatcher

Well hey, REAL Texas history is way to cool not to broadcast, and Steven L. Moore must be something of a prodigy...

http://www.stephenlmoore.com/

..anyhow, I dunno the quality of his WWII books, but he's rapidly climbing my list of favorite Frontier Authors.

One thing that puzzled me was that when Mr Moore wrote of the famous incident where the Comanches boiled into town spoiling for a fight right after the Council House fight (or ambush, from their perspective) and surrounded San Jose Mission, he made no mention of the subsequent duel where two Texan Officers shot and killed each other in a duel precipitated by one accusing the other of cowardice.

Turns out that the reason he did not was that this duel did not take place right away. The council house fight took place on March 19th, 1840. Nine days later, as Moore has it...

..a war party of at least two hundred Comanches rode down to San Antonio on March 28 looking for a fight. Chief Isomania, veteran of an earlier fight with frontiersman Jack Hays, boldly came into town with another Comanche. They rode into the San Antonio public square, tauntingly circling around the plaza on their horses. The two paraded some distance down Commerce Street and back again, shouting all the while for the Americans to come out and fight them...

In front of the local saloon on the northeast corner of the public square, he halted his horse. Rising in his stirrups, he angrily shook his clenched fist and shouted defiantly.

Mary Maverick wrote in her memoirs "The citizens, through an interpreter, told him the soldiers were all down the river at Mission San Jose and if he went there Colonel Fisher would give him fight enough."

A whole bunch can be gleaned between the lines here, the patrons of the saloon clearly not identified with "the Americans" down at Mission San Jose, neither by the patroms themselves nor apparently by the Comanches.

Often as I have been there, I dont have any photos of Mission San Jose at all where it sits today in the heart of the South Side on busy four-lane Roosevelte Avenue. Through chance preservation and purposeful restoration is remains by far the best-preserved of our five missions, and is the one I would recommend visitors to go see, maybe even more than the Alamo.

This sketch as it was back then is pretty much how it is today, part of a National Historic Park AND an active local congregation.




The acting commander of the "Americans" (I woulda said Texians) at Mission San Jose, one Captain William Redd, famously refused to fight, much to the chagrin of his own men, telling the Comnaches to come back in twelve days when the unilaterally declared truce was over. Redd apparently still believed more White captives could be ransomed for the Comanche women and children.

It was this refusal to fight that ultimately embroiled him in that fatal duel six weeks after the fact.

Turns out though that Captain Redd was absolutely correct in his assessment; the previously mentioned five prisoner exchanges took place after this incident, Cheif Isomania himself being one of the two Comanche leaders active in arranging the exchanges.

Indeed, the actual commanding officer at the Mission San Jose, Lieutenant Colonel Fisher, was laid up from falling off a horse at the time Isomania and his Comanches rode up. Fisher had been in charge on the Texian side at the Council House fight, and was not by any description an "Indian lover", yet he had this to say (as related per Moore) presumably pertaining to Isomania's subsequent negotiations...

I saw one of the principal War Chiefs, Isamani, who is well known here and sustains a great reputation for bravery.

He appears to be evidently anxious to become reconciled with the whites; and it appears that in a council held by them the evening before they came in town, he killed a Comanche Indian for endeavoring to excite the Comanches to offensive measures.

They have gone on the Pinto trail towards the head of the Pedernales.

Note, the Palo Pinto Trail was the very same followed four years later by Jack Hays prior to the Battle of Walker Creek.

Birdwatcher

Lysander Wells, the guy who instigated the duel, was actually a 28 year old Yankee from Connecticut. This is the same Texas Cavalry guy who's Colt Patterson binded on him during the Council House Fight...

http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fwe24

The other fatality, 30 year-old William Davis Redd, was a lawyer from Georgia.

http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fre11

I dunno what the prior history was between these two, but it would appear Wells willfully left Redd with no other recource BUT to fight a duel (as per Moore)..

During the early part of May, Colonel Edward Burleson made a tour of the detachments of the First Regiment of Infantry which were stationed at Mission San Jose in San Antonio. During his visit, two of his leading officers had a quarrel about the Council House Fight.

Major Lysander Wells of the cavalry was bitter towards Captain William Redd for not fighting Chief Isomania's Comanches on March 28...

In an insulting letter, Major Wells apparently called Captain Redd a "dastardly coward" among other things. Wells also complained that Redd was under the influence of a "petticoat government," making insinuations about a certain woman from Georgia who was living with him out of wedlock. Lysander Wells had his letter signed by others from San Antonio before presenting it to Redd.

Captain Redd was furious, and challenged Wells to a duel the following morning. At 6:00 am on May 10, 1840, two of the Texas Army leaders met where the Ursuline Convent now stands near the Alamo.

Two other Texas Army leaders, Albert Sidney Johnson and Felix Huston, had duelled in 1837. They both had old horse pistols. Three years later, the weapons were much better. In fact Major Wells' cavalry is known to have been armed with the new Colt Patent Arms repeating pistol as of 1840.

"I aim for your heart" announced Redd.
"And I for your brains" countered Wells.

Bexar citizen Mary Maverick later recorded the deadly results of the army leaders' duel...

They fired. Redd sprang high into the air and fell dead with a bullet in his brain. Wells was shot near the heart, but lived two weeks, in great torture, begging everyone near to dispatch him, or furnish him a pistol that he might kill himself and end his agony....

In Captain Redd's pocked was found a marriage license and a certificate showing that he was wedded to the girl - also letters to members of his own and her families, speaking of her in the tenderest manner, and asking them to protect and to provide for her.

First a noted Comanche War leader rides into town and stands outside a saloon in the town square screaming for the Americans to come out and fight, and then this.

History better than fiction.

Birdwatcher

Dunno if I'm the only one reading anymore, but working out the supply of revolvers in early Texas is of interest...

First off, in 1840 everything was still produced at Colt's "Patent Arms Company" at Patterson NJ. Apparently the durability and uniformity of parts was still a big issue in that era, and Pattersons gained a quick reputation for fragility, prob'ly why the operation folded.

Wiki gives the following stats...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colt_Paterson



OK, more'n 2,800 Pattersons made, how many made it to Texas?

"Texas History Online" has it that The Republic of Texas ordered 180 of the .36 caliber Holster model revolvers for its navy in August 1839 http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/lnc01

Moore ("Savage Frontier") gives a pretty comprehansive account but is vague on numbers, from which I assume we don't know today exactly how many Pattersons were sent here...



That would be where Lyman Wells got his one presumes. Interesting to note that the new handgun was classed as a cvalry arm from the very beginning, that not being an innovation of Jack Hays.



For way of comparison, note that the Texas War Department was also contracting at that time with Tryon in Philadelphia for 1,500 smoothbore flintlock at about $20 per..

http://www.thestoryoftexas.com/get_involved/pdfs/Star_OND11.pdf

Thus for comparison...

Flintlock musket... $20

Belt model revolver... $35

Revolving carbine, with supplied accesories... $55

For further point of comparison; Moore has it that a Ranger Captain of that era made $75 a month while a Private made $35. Moore also points has it that,such was the demand for and the scarcity of these weapons that the going rate for one among civilians at that time hovered around $200.

Birdwatcher

Sure is a knotty problem ironing out Texas history; often a paucity of written records and a bewildering array of militias and ranging units mustered for short terms of service, most of which either encountered no Indians at all on their expeditions or else fruitlesslessy mustered in response to murders to chase an elusive foe a hundred miles or more before horses gave out.

Complicating matters more is that civilians not infrequently went out on their own hook in response to raids, usually with the same lack of success. I'll have to consult Wilbarger's classic "Indian Depredations in Texas" again, he list amny instances of this.

Specific to Colts Patent Firearms with their revolving cylinders, we know that numbers were purchased by the Republic of Texas, and that these began to arrive in 1840. Many went to the Navy, and thus were removed from immediate consideration re: the Comanche Wars, others went to the Texas Army, at least some of which, brand new, were on hand for the Council House Fight.

From that point the problem becomes that the erswhile First Regiment of Infantry (AKA Frontier Regiment) which essentially WAS the Texas Army in 1840 and therefore must have recieved a lion's share of the new arms was singularly inactive in fighting Indians (or anybody else) through 1840, finally being disbanded in 1841 due to the Texas Congress refusing to appropriate funds.

In practice, though the First Regiment had been used against the Cherokees in 1839, Mexico remained the greater threat to the existance of the Republic than did Comanches. Other short term militia or volunteer units would be raised in 1840 to combat Indians, even in San Antonio where the majority of the regiment was based.

It is apparently a topic of much debate exactly when and how many Colts' weapons appeared in the Frontier areas, I shall list individual examples of their use in combat from 1840 as given by Moore, but first an aside about duelling, which carried off two Frontier Regiment Officers after the Council House fight.

Duelling assumes almost comic opera status in that period of Texas (and I suppose Southern) history tho' of course it was no doubt anything but for the participants, such that the officers at least appeared to be in more danger from each other than they were from Indians.

There was a second duel fought between officers of the Frontier Regiment in San Antonio resulting in a wounding that same year. And the nominal leader of the Texas militia which was to fight the Comanches at Plum Creek in August, Felix Huston, had three years earlier almost killed Albert Sydney Johnson in a duel precipitated by himself.

Another participant at the Battle of Plum Creek was the entirely remarkable Benjamin McCullough, later a noted Texas Ranger and Confederate General of considerable natural talent, the guy is pretty much indispensible to Texas history. HIS career was almost nipped in the bud too in 1839, when duelling with the nefarious Rueben Ross..

http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fro84

This duel was fought at forty paces with RIFLES, Mc Culloch suffering an arm injury that would trouble him the rest of his life. The quarrel with Ross flared up again, and this time it was Benjamin's younger brother Henry that dueled with Ross on Christmas Eve 1839, with pistols, Henry Mc Culloch emerging victorious.

Arm injury notwithstanding, Ben Mc Culloch himself challenged a political rival to a duel in 1840, the other man declining to fight.

Just to add to the general air of lunacy, the President of the Texas Republic at that time was Mirabeau Lamar. Second President of Texas after Sam Houston, elected in 1838 when both his opponents committed suicide.

Were it not for the accounts of such remarkably level-headed folks as Noah Smithwick and RIP Ford, one might conclude that the whole Texas leadership was nuts.

Birdwatcher

Johnston, not Johnson. A Confederate General, not some nasty politician.

Fine example of a Colt's Navy with the barrel wedge properly placed.



Another one, this one circa 1852.

It is a bad if not uncommon mistake to equate being nuts with nuts.

Never said he was, a nasty politician that is. Huston apparently pressed the issue, the occasion being Huston's losing command of the Texas Army to Johnston. Anyhoo, it worked after a fashion; Johnston, being wounded, could not take command.

Smithwick encountered Johnston, twenty-five years later, the occasion being Smithwick (a Union man) leaving Texas for California encountering Johnston comng the other way...

http://www.lsjunction.com/olbooks/smithwic/otd26.htm

It was so hot during the day that we had to keep up our night travels, during which every cactus was regarded with suspicion. Somewhere out in that desolate region we met A. Sidney Johnston and party hastening to join the Confederate army. Upon learning that we were from Texas he said with some asperity:

"I think you are doing very little for your country."

"Well," I retorted, "it seems to me you are doing equally as little for yours." Johnston had just resigned his position as commander of the Pacific Coast Division of the United States army.

We wanted to send letters back to friends in Texas by the party, but they did not care to have papers that would betray their destination in case they fell in with United States troops. They at least had the courage of their convictions, which was more than could be said of the current of emigration that was setting toward California.



In this case I believe one can judge that particular tree by its nuts... er... fruit.

Birdwatcher

Some histories, including that by Fehrenbach, report the Comanches as strangely absent from the Bexar (San Antonio) area in the months following the Council House fight. These same accounts entirely ignoring the prisoner exchages occurring in the month following the incident.

Moore (Savage Frontier) refers to several depredations actually committed by Comanches around San Antonio and Austin in the summer of 1840.

A common failing in our foreign policy, then and now, is to assume that all of the actions of our enemies are in response to us, as if they had no other concerns of their own.

1840 was the summer the Comanches and Kiowa allies concluded their "Great Peace" treaty with the Cheyenne and Arapho at Bent's Fort way up on the Arkansas River in present-day Colorado. This was a big deal for the Comanches and thousands were present. The extent to which those proceedings affected the Southern Comanches down in Central Texas, and how many were present, is unknown.

The way I read it was the treaty was arranged as a pragmatic measure by the Bent brothers to keep the peace around Bent's Fort, which by that time had become an important trading post for a number of Plains tribes.

Other histories have it that the peace treaty was a pragmatic decision by the Comanches to secure their northern border in the face of increasing pressures by the Texans in the east. Moore points out however that the Comanches had hardly yet begun to lose and that, in 1840, still pretty much had free rein across the state. Comanches up north making peace in response to pressures hundreds of miles away also would imply a centralized policy-making process on their part, something seemingly unlikely among this famously anarchic people.

In any event, the loss of maybe thirty Comanches at one time as had occurred at the Council House fight was a relatively minor event on the scale of Comanche history.

Meanwhile in San Antonio, at the Missions, besides the two duels fought by their officers a mutiny occurred among the Frontier Regiment, surpressed by other Texas troops hustled down from Austin to keep the peace. Two deserters were actually shot, a rather unusually severe punishment for a fairly common offense in the Texas Army at that time.

Despite the existence of this ~500 man Frontier regiment, calls were put out that summer for the creations of a 300 man "Border Guard" to protect the frontier around Austin, and for a seperate 500 man force to protect the trade highway between San Antonio through Laredo, a commerce frequently raided by "Indians, Mexicans, and other lawless Banditti".

Sorta like that extact same trade route at the present time, when looking at the events in the area we commonly overlook the continuing legitimate commerce quietly occurring amid the assorted bad guys and chaos.

Given the volatility of Texas politics, as best I can gather the Border Guard was never deployed and the second force never completely mustered.

However a six-week expedition against the Comanches WAS launched from San Antonio in July of 1840. One Captain Clendenin led twelve Frontier Regiment soldiers accompanied by a local attorney, Captain John R. Cunnigham and nineteen volunteers. A force of thirty-three hardly sounds like an army but recall that Jack Hays had less than half that many men on hand four years later when he fought the much-vaunted "Battle" of Walker's Creek.

Seems a safe bet that at least some of the new revolving firearms were carried by the members of the Frontier Regiment, tho no mention is made, seems possible that a prominent and presumably successful individual such as Captain Cunnigham could have acquired one too.

The force parted company shortly after leaving town (a command dispute one wonders?) and Clendendin and the twelve Frontier Regiment privates eventually returned wthout encountering any Indians (actually, a not uncommon occurrence for travellers at that time, Texas is a big place).

Cunningham's group of twenty however, by virtue of the services of their Tonkawa guide Antonio, soon picked up a trail of a small group of Comanches crossing the Frio River, fifty miles West of San Antonio.

July is hot in Texas, and an arduous day-long forced march following the trail ensued, Antonio locating a camp of twenty Comanches towards evening. A surpise attack the following morning routed the camp, no bodies recovered but "several severely wounded". Isomania hisself was reportedly present among the Comanches, and I dunno if this prominent War Chief appears in history again after this event, so perhaps he was a casualty. Cunningham in his report does mention the courage of the Comanche rear guard enduring heavy rifle fire while covering the retreat of their companions, sounds like something a guy famous for his valor would do,

Of note among the spoils recovered in the camp; a quantity of silver eagle money, previously stolen along the Laredo road along with the mule that had carried it, and "many guns". Contrary to popular history, there are a number of references to rifles in the hands of Comanches during these years, and likewise it seem more than possible that people who had traded with Americans and Mexicans for years would realize the value of minted coinage.

Birdwatcher

OK I finally caught up. So very interesting. Lavaca Lodge 36 is across from the Linnville site mentioned much earlier. Hell of a long ways to be raiding down here on the coast and roving around Austin. Impressive amount of traveling to say the least.

Thanks to all of you for the thread. I'll be adding to the book collection.

Richard

I'm just glad anyone's still reading the thread


I'm gonna jump out of narrative sequence here for a book recommendation.

See, popular Texas narratives, incuding Gwynne's "Empire of the Summer Moon" fail to account for a puzzling discrepancy; that being the collapse of the Comanches in the mid 19th Century. Puzzling in that the inroads made by Texans with guns, ANY guns not just sixguns, are not nearly enough to account for the population collapse after the 1840's.

On the one hand we have Comanches killing people in broad daylight within the Austin city limits into the 1840's, then a seemingly sudden jump to remnants being chased around up on the High Plains in the 1870's. No real explanation either of why a major portion of the tribe in Central Texas should be so completely reduced to misery and handouts on reservations by the 1850's.

I found a great book today, one which many of you may already know about, and a must-read for anyone interested in Texas History. "Comanche Empire" by Pekka Hamalainen (2008), unique among books on real Comanche history in that it ain't boring.

http://www.amazon.com/Comanche-Empire-Lamar-Western-History/dp/0300126549

An exerpt, describing Comancheria in 1849....

In 1849.... [on the eve of the massive cholera epidemic] They were prosperous and powerful. Although epidemics had cut into their numbers, their population hovered near the twenty thousand level... There were still an estimated eight hundred Mexican slaves and countless Native captives in Comancheria... The various Comanche bands collectively owned well over one hundred thousand horses and mules... and the Comanche alliance network comprised more than twenty different groups, who sent regular trading envoys into Comancheria, bringing in firearms, metal, food and luxuries...

Comancheria was a land of great riches and enormous bison herds... Calculations based upon the range-use efficiency of livestock... suggest that Nineteenth Century Comancheria could support approximately seven million bison... Based on these figures, the Comanches and their allies could kill approximately 280,000 bison a year without depleting the herds...

..the Comanches and their allies were killing an estimated 175,000 bison a year for subsistence alone... [plus an estimated 25,000 a year for trade]...

[after removal to Indian Territory in the 1830's] Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws and Creeks - all numerous groups - embarked on active bison hunting, and many Delaware, Shawnee and Kickapoo bands became specialized bison hunters...

At the same time, on Comancheria's western edge, Ciboleros, the New Mexican bison hunters... harvested an estimated 25,000 bison per year....

Cheyennes and Arapahos delivered tens of thousands of robes to Bent's Fort and probably harvested many of them in Comancheria...

This balance was rendered even shakier by the Comanche's burgeoning horse economy... Horses and bison have a 80% dietary overlap and very similar water requirements... Even more critically, both animals could survive the harsh winters on the plains only by retreating into river valleys... To meet the expansive grazing needs of their growing domestic herds, Comanches had turned more and more bottomlands into herding range...

Southern Comancheria near the Texas frontier was the home of massive herds of horses, which had virtually taken over the region's resources... On the western portion of the Llano Estacado... the bison had to compete for grass, water and shelter with thousands of sheep driven there by New Mexican herders....

...freighting along the Santa Fe trial grew into a large-scale industry in the early 1840's. A typical trade caravan consisted of some two dozen freight wagons and several hundred oxen and mules, and each year hundreds of such caravans trekked back and forth.... the trader's livestock introduced anthrax, brucellosis and other bovine diseases...

In 1845, a long and intense dry spell struck Comancheria... it was a difficult time for the Comanches but a disastrous one for the bison... Comanches headed for the few spots where water and forage were available...

In 1847, reporting on the situation on the Western Plains of Texas, Indian agent Robert Neighbors wrote "The buffalo and other game have almost entirely disappeared."... At the same time, Comanches continued to kill large numbers of buffalo for commercial trade...


The author doesn't mention 'em, but I suppose one could throw in at least a couple of million wild longhorns on the Texan side of Comancheria. Famously six million by the 1860's but perhaps there were fewer in the 1840's.

And note; Indian Agent Robert Neighbors was a prominent figure in Texas history who travelled extensively around the Plains, presumably he knew whereof he spoke...

Fascinating stuff, and a must-read book

Birdwatcher

Can't wait for you to really get into the 18th century portion of Texas History!!!!!!! You'll freak out! I suggest you start with the Bexar Archive Translations. I think North Texas State University (Denton) has finally got them available online......

You will also enjoy any of the works of Herbert Eugene Bolton. The real Father of early Texas History. Bolton was the chap who helped with the placement of all those big granite "El Camino Real" markers (like on SH 21) on the route from Bexar to Natchitoches La. He rode the route in 1914 on horseback.

Bob N.

My first handgun, back in 1984, was a well-used Uberti 1858 Remington repro, shot the heck out of it, eventually I gave it to a friend's son in New Mexico who cowboyed with it for years, far as I know its still going strong.

Never did mess with them wedge designs until recently. Bought the '51 some years back. After all, if you're talking Texas handguns, especially cap and ball, the '51 Colt was THE handgun in Texas.

Speaking of wedge designs....

http://collectorebooks.com/gregg01/coltrevolver/Lot-462.htm



There's a few of these things still around, at least one probably unfired (NIB??), if ya got a cool $30-$70,000 to blow prob'ly just the thing to impress folks at a Campfire gathering...

Anyways... William Selby Harney....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_S._Harney

Called by the Lakotas "Mad Bear" in "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" (also, apparently, "Woman Killer"). Harney is also the guy described in the recently discussed "Eagles and Empire" as the guy who brutally executed by strangulation at one go (actually hanging, but done so as not to break the neck) 30 Irish deserters of the San Patricio Brigade in the Mexican War, including a guy that had just had his legs amputated..

Brutal as he was, and however he felt about Irish and Catholics, he WAS an effective Officer in the field.

He's pertinent here on account of if ya wanna talk Colt Patersons in combat, he's your guy.


Turns out that in 1838, in response to a request by Harney, Sam Colt sailed to the Florida Territory and personally sold him and General Jessup fifty revolving rifles and the same number of handguns.

The Seminole War has been called "our first Vietnam", and was indeed a protracted and expensive guerilla conflict involving an elusive enemy setting ambush in densely vegetated Tropical terain. Harney too (easy to calculate his age, he was born in 1800) was no shrinking violet when it came to combat, personally leading 50 hand-picked men of his 2nd US Dragoons into the field on "Spec Ops" type endeavors, all armed with these new rifles.

http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/1998-08-16/news/9808140824_1_colt-seminoles-harney


Crap, a whole new line of inquiry, prior to googling that quote up I had read of the Paterson Colts in Florida in mostly dismissive terms.

Paterson Colts did fail military trials at West Point in '37 and again in '40, but surely Harney's continuing enthusiatic endorsements must have played some role in the purchase of those 1,000 Walker Colts in '47, launching a whole new era.

Be interesting to read the specifics of Harney's Florida scrapes with these weapons. We know in combat, especially in ambush situations, that people have a tendency to fire off all their rounds pretty quick. Do that with a Paterson and reloading is gonna take considerable time (unless ya got extra loaded cylinders on hand like Jack Hays' crew).

That and the complexity and fragility of the arm, plus the fact that, until the '51 Navy thirteen years and a different factory later, parts for these things were NOT drop-in interchangeable between weapons.

I'm wondering if they wouldn't have been better served with the much maligned but actually quite functional Hall's carbines (the one with the chamber that tipped up from the front to load), already in service, simple to fix, and available in both flint and percussion versions.

Birdwatcher

Also, Hall breeches could be removed and used as a pistol.

Many of your questions can be answered if you can find a copy of Randall Gilberts book, Arms for Texas"....

BN

Sounds like Mr. Colt had quite the knack for selling his guns, too.

Above quote from your link: http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/1998-08-16/news/9808140824_1_colt-seminoles-harney

That weren't the half of it, the guy hustled to make a buck, and partied hard too...

http://www.ctheritage.org/encyclopedia/topicalsurveys/colt.htm

..and Kaywoodie wrote...



Thanks for the tips

In popular pre-PC Texas history at least, Comanches unthinkingly committed pillage, rape and murder.

Hamalainen in "Comanche Empire" gives a more nuanced version. I mean, pillage rape and murder were still a main export, but I least they thought about it (tho' I doubt the author would support that interpretation )...

But a pretty good exploration of what made the guy in the breechclout and paint raiding the settlements tick:

Chief A Big Fat Fall by Tripping, it is told, owned fifteen hundred horses, but he was so fat he could not ride any of them and had to be moved about on a travois. That a man so obese rose to a leadership position in a society known for its martial skills may be unexpected, but it was far from exceptional.... [the author goes on to list three similarly obese major Comanche cheifs at that time]

Rich, powerful, flamboyant and physically striking... A Big Fat Fall by Tripping represented the new elite men who led Comanche society in the early Nineteenth Century... They embody the complex changes that transformed Comanche society during the zenith of Comanche power....

Just as the rise of Comanche hegemony was made possible by horses, so did the new elite base its position on horse wealth. An averageComanche family owned twenty to thirty horses and mules [the author states elsewhere that about one-third of their horse herds were actually mules, some Comanches actively breeding these], but wealthy families - the largest households capable of mobilizing the most labor - could possess two, three, or even ten times this amount...

Comanches always considered their horses private property and massive herds of horses represented a source of immense economic, political, and social capital to their owners. Horses were tools that allowed men to raid for more livestock and slaves...

Men with large horse herds could support large extended families and several slaves, who provided supplemental labor for hunting, herding, and other household chores. Horses also provided the social currency that gave men access to women... Although most men could eventually afford the favored bride-price, only the wealthiest men could pay the price several times over and amass a substantial labor pool of extra wives. Rich horse owners could then invest their assets to acquire several slaves and wives to prepare robes, meat, and other tradable goods, which in turn enabled them to dominate the wealth-generating import and export trade....

Few men became superrich, the elite of the elite. Typically senior men in their fifties, sixties and seventies, they accumulated enough wealth to turn their households into veritable manufacturies. They had the means to purchase and adopt numerous personal slaves and captives, and they had several wives who not only labored themselves but who could feed and care for a multitude of children. While most Comanche extended families had one or two slaves, the wealthiest ones had several dozen.

Preeminent elders also had several marriagable daughters, who attracted courting bachelors and their lavish gifts, and several sons, who hunted and raided for them. Belonging to the new aristocracy also meant being able to claim other Comanche men as social dependents. Prosperous elite men lent running mounts to horseless young men in return for a share in the bounty, in effect employing the junior men as hired hands.

They might also marry thier daughters to less accomplished men who paid the bride-price through labor, serving their fathers inlaw as debt bondsmen, sometimes for years. if a man had several married daughters, he might be able to stop hunting himself, because custom obliged his sons-in-law to provide him with meat evan after the marriage was concluded.

The most successful elite men could retire almost completely from physical labor, becoming something of an anomaly in what was still, in essence, a labor-intensive foraging economy... They could leave the life of a warrior-hunter, grow fat, and carry their bulk as a marker of masculine honor and priviledge...

When men reached the status of prosperous leisure, they were in a position to amass considerable political power. Since the no longer had to prove their worth in aggressive competition with other men, they could appear indifferent about their personal status and more concerned about group welfare, a quality the Comanches thought essential in leaders...

If these leaders formed the upper echelon of Comanche society, the bottom end consisted of young men with few or no horses. The building of a substantial herd was a slow and gruelling process, and most men spent several years in this lowly position. Like most foraging societies, Comanches put high value on self-reliance and expected young men to make their own fortunes, even the sons of the wealthy elite had to devote years to livestock raiding because it wsa considered inappropriate for young men to ask their fathers to provide them with horses.

And raiding did not offer junior men such a fast track to wealth as one might assume, senior men who led war parties had the first pick, younger men were fortunate to score a few low-quality horses. Moreover, young men frequently gave away all or most of their captured horses to the parents of a potential bride in the hope of earning the right to begin courtship...

The lack of horses exclude young men from key activities that brought men wealth, respect and status. They had to borrow animals from senior men and pay them with a portion of the kill or plunder, which in turn prevented them from accruing surplus animlas and robes for trade purposes. High quality guns, metal tools, blankets and other imported goods were all but inaccessible to them.

Marriage too was but a distant prospect. Not only had the escalation of polygamy diminished the pool of potential wives, but junior men lacked the horses needed to pay the bride-price. Poor and prospectless, they were undesirable to adolescent unmarried girls... many unattached Comanche women viewed marriage as a vehicle for social mobility and shunned less established suitors.

Poor young men lived in all-male gangs on the outskirts of camp, sleeping in makeshift shelters, subsisting on small animals, and servng wealthy senior men as hunters and raiders. Many Comanche men spent more than a decade in this kind of low-status social place.....

Between these two extremes was a large segment of middling sorts, tbhe families of early middle-aged men who had accumulated enough horses to considered secure if not quite rich. These men owning enough horses for hunting and raiding and enough pack animals to put a large family on horseback. A small reserve of surplus animals enabled them to participate in trade... Although they could not retire entirely from active labor, , their wives' labor allowed them to specialize in hunting and raiding.


Such a society would account for the early difficulties suffered by the young Quanah Parker after he was orphaned at age twelve (as describe in Gwynne's "Empire of the Summer Moon).

Hamalainen in his book makes scant mention of our familiar Texas pantheon of frontier heroes, but really, on the scale of twenty thousand Comanches (if there really were that many) in 1840, one could argue that our guys didn't make much of a dent on that tally with courage, determination and guns alone.

Where he does cite Texas is in reference to the unstoppable power of population demographics, the Texan population increasing from about 40,000 in 1840 to 600,000 by 1860. Meawhile Comanche numbers in that same interval declining from 20,000 people to less than 3,000.

Birdwatcher

You can say that again! Sam Colt was a fair-to-middlin' gun designer, but his designs needed really talented gunsmiths and manufacturers to get off the ground.

The parallels between Sam Colt and Steve Jobs are somewhat startling at times. I'm reading the recent Jobs biography, and it's like having deja vu. All over again.

That was a fascinating excerpt, Birdie! Thanks for sharing that. I'm gonna go looking for a copy of Hamalainan.

Birdwatcher, I think you've enough to add to the history that you should consider writing a book. Excellent insights here.

Doc,

Hamanleinen also gives a figure of 20,000 displaced Eastern Tribes in the Indian Territory by 1831, an era when these folks were still being removed to Oklahoma.

In other words, these new groups, collectively totalling half as many as the total Comanche population at its very peak, began to roam pretty much at will across and around Comancheria. My contention is, based upon accumulated years of recreational reading, that the Eastern Tribes killed far more Comanches in combat over the years than we ever did.

Interesting too that virtually ALL of our successful expeditions against Comanches were guided to 'em by these and other Natives. The only exception that comes to mind is a young Charles Goodnight finding Peta Nocona's camp (and thus Cynthia Anne Parker) in 1860. But then Mr Goodnight was reportedly tutored as a youth by an elderly Caddo living in the Brazos River bottoms.

All of which makes me suspect that truly virtuoso tracking, on the single-bent-blade-of-grass level, was a skill about like becoming a virtuoso on an fine instrument: To be THAT good you really gotta start as a child, the required circuitry literally becoming a permanent part of the developing brain.

A thing which has repercussions even into the modern era, and compelling evidence to keep one's kids off of video games...

http://articles.latimes.com/2009/oct/28/world/fg-bombs-vision28

The best troops he's ever seen when it comes to spotting bombs were soldiers from the South Carolina National Guard, nearly all with rural backgrounds that included hunting.

"They just seemed to pick up things much better," Burnett said. "They know how to look at the entire environment."

Troops from urban backgrounds also seemed to have developed an innate "threat-assessment" ability. Both groups, said Army research psychologist Steve Burnett, "seem very adaptable to the kinds of environments" seen in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Video game enthusiasts are narrower in their focus, as if the windshield of their Humvee is a computer screen. "The gamers are very focused on the screen rather than the whole surrounding," said Sgt. Maj. Burnett.




...edited to add "..and lifelong bird watchers living and working in a tough urban environment?

Well hey they can spot a ruby-crowned kinglet against a background of gang grafitti...."

Birdwatcher

Thanks, what I find really interesting in the maxims for success common to Comanche society and our own.

1) A great emphasis was placed on personal initiative.
2) The right to accumulate personal wealth was inviolate.
3) Said wealth was reinvested to create more wealth.
4) And nobody really gave a damn who your father was, there were numerous examples of captives rising through the ranks, including a few White and Black folks.

What Hamakeinen does noticeably omit however is what looms large in the Texas conciousness; nowhere does he make anything more than vague and indirect references to the sadistic torture of captives.

Unfortunate, as it brings the whole work into question.

Birdwatcher

My take on the book was that he was emphasizing the economic aspects of the Comanche rise to power.

When horsepower was king, the Comanches ruled, when the Comanches outnumbered the anglos, they dominated, when the Comanches had a quiver of 20-30 arrows against the whites single shot rifles and pistols, they ruled.

When the Texans became horsemen, when they got repeating rifles and pistols, and became proficient with them, when their population went from 20,000 to 600,000, Texans started to dominate (some measles, cholera or smallpox might have helped as well.)

Clearly, any sodbusters caught out alone were toast.

Torture is a cultural construct, that doesn't really impact the economics, except as it reduces the ability of slaves to do economic work (for the purposes of this analysis).

Sycamore

The problem is, where's the bodies? 'Cept for one or two occasions, the Texans and then US forces fought nothing more than skirmishes with the handfuls of Comanches they occasionally caught up to.

Things remained that way until the the US Cavalry using overwhelming force systematically ran them down in the 1870's, even then managing to kill but few, but making their continued existence on the plains as anything but impoverished wraiths impossible.

Disease? Indications are that it carried off 10,000 Comanches within a five year period beginning in 1849. If so, no other cause even came close, a familiar pattern that had been recurring over and over again since before the Pilgrims landed in Massachussetts and found piles of human bones.

Next to that, rainfall. Aint for nothing the symbol of the Plains in general and Texas in particular is the Aeromotor windmill, pumping water from underground, necessary for livestock even in wet years. The Comanches didn't have that option.

No place I am aware of can make one more aware of the catastrophic power of drought than Central Texas. In wet years the herbaceous growth is literally over your head, in dry years those very same areas are bare dirt. Horses and buffalo cant eat dirt, Hamalainen talks about the appearance of the classic signs of malnutrition among Comanche kids during the continuing drought in the 1850's.

1860's: the rains come back so the Comanches had mobility again, this coincident with the disappearance of anything resembling organized frontier protection in wartime Texas. Even so, by the 1870's the couple of thousand Comanches still out were best classed as not wild but merely feral, in that they were working a scam of seasonally relying upon handouts from the reservations in Oklahoma, and then deriving a living based upon stealing Texas cattle of all things.

Hanalainen going on to describe how this trade in stolen livestock was actively abetted for years by moneyed interests in New Mexico.

Naturally, Comanches successfully rustling Texas cattle by the thousands every year, just like the serious whupping the Texas Confederate forces got from the Kickapoos during those same years, aint something thats gonna get immortalized in popular Texas lore. Said systematic livestock raiding continuing after the end of the war into the 1870's despite an exploding Texas population.

One is reminded of Blue Duck's line in "Lonesome Dove"...

"I stole horses, burned farms, killed men, raped women and stole children all over your territory and until today, you never even got a good look at me!"

It was overwhelming forces of US Cavalry guided by Tonkawas, Shawnees, Delawares and Black Seminoles that finally put a stop to it, and brung down the end of an era.

Birdwatcher

The demise of the Buffalo is what ended the Comanche nation, as well as that of the Kiowa, Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho allies. The soldiers hastened their roundup onto the reservations, but the Buffalo hunters and the killing off of the Bison herds is what sealed the doom of the southern plains Indians. The Kansas herd, roughly those Buffaloes in Kansas and extending clear into Indian Territory and extreme north Texas, were essentially gone by the winter of 1873-74. The hunters moved onto the Llano Estacado during that winter and were not molested by the US Army. The combined force of southern Plains Indians attacked them at the 'walls in 1874 and were rebuffed-and the slaughter of the Bison continued.

Quanah Parker's band surrendered at Fort Sill in 1875. IIRC, the last Indian action in Kansas was in 1878. Texas is more problematic due to Apaches in extreme western areas, but the Bison were gone by 1878 too.

The US Army was incidental. The lack of Buffalo doomed the Comanch way of life.

A tad more complex than that, and a testimony to Comanche ingenuity.

From Hamaleinen...

..in 1865 there were several million head of unprotected cattle wandering in Texas, free of fences and free for the taking ...an extended Comanche raiding spree lasted into the 1870's.... Comanches were becoming full-fledged pastoralists who relied on domestic animals for their material well being...

The decline in the bison herds slowed after 1865, but the herds had settled at such a low plateau that Comanches were forced to search for alternate means of subsistence...

..an Indian agent from New Mexico inspected the Eastern Llano Estacado in 1867, he found there a mixed Comanche group of seven hundred lodges with some fifteen thousand horses and three to four hundred mules. "They also have Texas cattle without number" Labadi reported "and almost every day bring in more." Eighteen war parties were in Texas plundering for horses, mules and cattle....

In 1872... a Yamparika [Comanche] speaker retorted that "..if the buffalo herds might fail... the Comanches determined to hunt buffalo only the next winter, then they would allow them a year or two to breed without molestation, and they would rely on Texas cattle for sustenance in the meantime....

...Texas lost 6,255 horses and 11,395 head of cattle to Indian pillaging between 1866 and 1873, but the real losses may have been several times higher... in 1873, in the space of three months, Comanches brought more than thirty thousand head of Texas cattle to New Mexico. Comanches also raided in southwestern Indian Territory - Chickasaws filed 123 separate depredation claims between 1869 and 1873...

Near collapse in 1865, the Comanches had experienced a dramatic revival after the Civil War. Shedding what had become a burden and keeping and modifying what was still usable, they pieced together a dynamic new economy from the fragments of the old one. They repaired a crippled subsistence system by shifting to intensive pastoralism, by diversifying their bison-centered hunting economy, and by accepting US annuities....

"The murders that have been Committed on our frontier" one 1867 Texas official despared "are so frequent that they are only noticed by their friends and acquaintances as they would notice ones dying a natural death." The cattle ranching industry whose prospects in 1860 had seemed so promising was nearly paralyzed "nearly every drove of Cattle that attempt to cross the plains are captured by Indians which will cut off the Stock raisers of the frontiers from a market for their beef cattle."


So, buffalo remained important, perhaps especially for bands that may have been separated from their livestock herds by contant pursuit, but buffalo weren't the only things with four legs out on the plains. Heck, Hamanlienen even cites a report of Comanche tipis made from horsehides.

Of course, all of this from one author, but a good one, who looked at things not recognised by popular lore.

News to me too.

Birdwatcher

Yes it's a tad more complex...than the US Army being credited for driving them onto reservations. The Army was able to do so due to the lack of hunting. The Plains Indians subsisted on Buffalo and the Buffalo on the Staked Plains were literally there in 1874 and not there by 1878. Not there as in having vanished from the face of the earth.

If you haven't read it, read Getting a Stand. The Time of the Buffalo is also good reading.

Look, the Comanche adapted. Of that there can be no question. The problem is, for the old ways of raiding to continue, the Comanch had to be nomadic. To be nomadic, the Buffalo had to exist. They were wiped out in the Comancheria in about six years. Thus, the raiding way of life vanished in the six years that the Buffalo were wiped from the area.

The Comanche also were just the dominant tribe, not the only one. The other three were there too.

...and yet the Comanches themselves, up until the Eastern Tribes showed up in such well-armed and capable numbers, were able to drive out and exclude competitors from those same buffalo plains at a time when buffalo were still present in the millions across six hundred miles of country.

By 1873 the gig was up for the Comanches and time was closing in. Heck, ALL the tribes eventually gave up, even Geronimo, whatever their way of life. Turns out constant pursuit and insecurity, even if you can escape death, is an untenable way to live. The Lipan Apaches in Texas for one discovered that very same thing when the Comanches arrived, and at that time there were still buffalo everywhere.

JMHO,

Birdwatcher

p.s. thirty thousand cows delivered to New Mexico in just three months by Comanches is quite a statement about lifestyle and economy.

"Even" Geronimo? I thought one of the big points of the thread was that the Comanch actually drove those Apaches out of their territory?

The Comanch were driven to the reservation literally, by the US Army, but the Army was only one of the forces that combined to bring about the set of circumstances that made the Comanch quit the raiding lifestyle. My point is that if you want to look at THE biggest factor, it was probably the Buffalo Hunt. The soldiers just rounded them up at that point and put them on the reservation, where they had to stay because it was game over.

You're quite a historian and thinker on this subject Birdy. My hat is officially off to you.

You and your family have a happy New Year.

Exactly, by denying those Plains Apaches peace and security, even in the midst of plenty.

Simply put, the Comanches gave up raiding because they could no longer get away with it. They came onto the reservations when staying off them became too costly.

Anyhow, Moore, Gwynne and Hamaleinen are the creative ones, I've just been parroting them.

..and a Hapy New Year to you too Sir

There's the understatement of the year, LOL!!

It was a multifactorial decline that led to the Comanche and other Indian tribes being subdued to reservation life, and I mean no disrespect nor am being quarrelsome when I say that disease was the primary force that defeated the Comanche.

Disease drove the decline of the Comanche, as it ded on the rest of the Plains, and had done in the Eastern tribes and on the West coast as well. Populations don't drop from 40,000 to 4,000 in 30 years for any other reason than disease (and its close cousin, famine, which clearly didn't apply to the Comanche in that time period). Warfare, loss of buffalo, economic forces are all contributing factors, but smallpox, measles and diphtheria killed 10 native Americans for every one killed by a white bullet.

This continues to be a fascinating thread, gentlemen. I've learned far more from you guys on this topic than I ever could have expected to when I posted the original book review. Thanks a bunch.

Scored "The Empire" and "Rip Ford's Texas" from Santy.

Enjoy, poboy!

I've got Hamlainen and Rip Ford on my Amazon wish list...

Thank You guys and Happy New Year.
'Though contributing nothing I have learned much and I'm grateful.

for you Comanchists, this timeline is kind of cool.

http://www.comanchelanguage.org/Comanche%20Timeline.htm

my family settled in Wise County in 1861, got chased out back to Missouri during the Unpleasantness when the Comanche pushed the frontier back, then returned in 1866 and ranched there again.

Wise County was a battleground, before and after the WBTS, as the attached map shows:

http://www.forttours.com/pages/hmwise.asp

next time I'm up there I'm going to spend a day with that map and visit some of the sites.

my great-grandfather Jeremiah was born in Texas in '61, lived to be 104 so I got to spend a lot of time with him. he had ridden in a punitive raid as a young teenager after their cattle were rustled by Comanche bravos raiding off their reservation in Oklahoma, and had bloodcurdling Indian raid stories he used to love to tell his great-grandkids.

The last Indian raid in Wise county was in 1875. Jeremiah had 17 children by three wives, many of whom moved farther west to Haskell and Stonewall counties in the late 1800s after it began to develop....although the counties were set up in the 50s, whites couldn't live there until the Comanche wars were over.

Nice timeline Steve. I would like to also say Thanks to all of you making this a most interesting thread.

What is known for certain is that on August 5th, 1840 a sizeable force of Comanches came down from the Texas Hill Country and crossed above San Antonio heading Southeast towards the Gulf.

Moore (Savage Frontier) who devotes the four books in his series to just ten years of Texas history (1835-1845) and so has the luxury of details, puts the number at over 600, including some women and children, and many Kiowas in the mix. The Kiowas lived north of the Comanches, in Western Oklahoma and the High Plains, so indeed at least some of this war party could have come down direct from the large treaty gathering up at Bent's Fort on the Arkansas.

Moore also states that there were a small number of Mexicans accompanying the war party. Coulda happened, in popular Texas history we generally overlook the fact that Mexicans had been wandering those plains for more'n a hundred years before Texas was independent.

There seems little question that the Cherokees, prior to their forcible expulsion from East Texas the year before this raid, had been in independent communication with Mexico. Wasn't mere chance either that Kickapoos, Seminoles and Black Seminoles while living in Oklahoma more than a decade later, were able to enter into contractual agreements with Mexico independent of any involvement by or knowledge of Americans.

Moore does a better job of pointing out too than most how indefinite the prospects of Texas really were in 1840. Though probably unexpellable by that time by Mexican forces, there weren't yet the critical mass of Anglos in the State to render the point moot. Indeed, IIRC, hostile Mexican forces would occupy San Antonio twice (??) more in the next few years.

Earlier in 1840, before the Comanche raid, defeated forces of a Federalist Mexican faction under General Antonio Canales had retreated into Texas as far north as the Medina River just south of San Antonio. These troops were allowed sactuary and Canales himself travelled to Austin and Houston to purchase supplies. Arrangements were made such that if an invasion from Mexico by the opposing Centralist faction was attempted, the Texan Frontier Regiment in San Antonio was to ally themselves with these Mexican Federalist troops to oppose the invasion.

The Commander of the Frontier Regiment, Lt. Col. William Fisher, the same guy who had presided over the Council House Fight, was removed from his post in early August (coincidentally concurrent with the Comanche Raid), when it was learned that he has raised a force of 200 Texan adventurers and entered into the service of Mexico on the Federalist side. This absence of an established chain of command perhaps accounting for the fact that few San Antonians appear to have been present at Plum Creek, where the invading Comanche raiders and their allies would be scattered.

Birdwatcher

Steve thanks for posting those
norm

Your people went back to Missouri during the war? My gosh, the Comanch couldn't have been worse than the Redlegs. Most people went from Missouri to Texas. The state capitol was relocated to Marshall, Texas. Lots of them never went back to Missouri either.

Indeed an interesting thread. We live smack in the middle of the area of the Comanche "Empire". Camp Auger was just up the river a couple of miles which was where a detachment of Buffalo Soldiers were at to help with the Comanche problem. A small running skirmish or two was reported right where I write this and a neighbor found an old Sharps carbine while digging around doing some construction. This is the area known as "The Big Pasture" and was where Quannah Parker hunted with Roosevelt along with Jack Abernathy who demonstrated how to catch wolves alive by hand.

You can still go to the Comanche Casino just up the road and leave with you ass full of arrows if not careful...

In popular Texas lore, the Great Comanche Raid of 1840 was a unique event, the Southern Comanche Nation mustering all their forces to strike the Texans a mighty revenge blow.

I suppose there was a lot of that in it, but raids on that scale certainly weren't unprecedented elsewhere, and a number of major raids involving hundreds of Comanches and Kiowas were launched in those years, all those OTHER big raids targeting Mexico.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comanche%E2%80%93Mexico_Wars

Though we view them primarily as sadistic raiders, as the wiki link above and Hamaleinen ("Comanche Empire") point out, there was a strong commercial aspect to these raids, This from Hamaleinen...

Early nineteenth-century Comancheria was a dense and dynamic marketplace, the center of a far-flung trading empire that covered much of North America's heartland... The Comanche trade pump sent massive amounts of horses and mules to the north and east, enough to support the numerous equestian societies elsewhere on the Great Plains and enough to contribute to the western expansion of the American settlement frontier.

In return for their extensive commercial services Comanches imported enough horticultural produce to sustain a population of twenty to thirty thousand and enough guns, lead and powder to defend a vast territory against Native enemies as well as the growing, expansionist Texas Republic.

But that thriving exchange system was rapidly approaching the limits of its productive foundation... By the 1820's, the traditional raiding domains [to acquire livestock for trade] had become either exausted or unavailable... Comanches continued sporadic raiding in Texas... but the returns failed to meet their expansive livestock demands, which skyrocketed in the late 1830's and early 1840's when the opened trade with the populous nations recently arrived in the Indian Territory.

To keep their commercial system running, Comanches needed new, unexausted raiding fields, and they found them in Northern Mexico... Comanche raiding thus generated a massive northward flow of property from Mexico, a development promoted by many interest groups in North America... By the late 1830s it had become a common belief that "enterprising American capitalists' had established trading posts on the Comanche-Texas border in order to tap the "immense booty" that the Comanches, "the most wealthy as well as the most powerful of the most savage nations of North America", were hauling from northern Mexico.

Texas officials provided Comanche war parties free access through their state, hoping to direct the raids into Mexico, and even supplied southbound war bands with beef and other provisions.

Probly relevant that one of the early Jack Hays stories has him and his Rangers meeting with and providing beef cows to a Comanche raiding party going south, in that version "attempting to dissuade them from raiding"..

Many internet sources have it that the Great Comanche Raid of 1840 killed "hundreds of Texans". All of the authors we have been quoting here, even Fehrenbach, agree that the actual death toll was low; about twenty people all told. What the raid DID target however was horses, about two thousand rounded up and taken along during the five-day raid before Plum Creek. Horses, and as it turned out, large quantities of trade goods looted from Linnville.

Why a raid on that scale was never again attempted against the Texans may have had something to do with the heavy casualties the Indians suffered at Plum Creek (more than eighty dead, if you've been to Cabelas in Buda on I 35, the fleeing Comanches drove their stolen stock through that area). OTOH Comanches, right up until the end, were never noted for timidity.

Actual conditions at that time seem to agree with Hamalienen's account, by 1840 it may be that the Texan settlements at the edge of the plains were pretty much picked over. Small-scale livestock raids were incessant during those years. During the Great Raid, Ben McCullough, attempting to raise a body of men, sent word around the Gonzales TX area seeking for volunteers to assemble. One volunteer later recalled....

A larger number would have moved out, but for the very short notice of the intended expedition and the great difficulty of procuring horses the Indians having about a week before stolen a majority of the best in the neighborhood

Noah Smithwick, at that time living on Webber's Prairie over by Bastrop, expounds at length on the topic of the innumerable thefts of horses around the settlements at that time, and his exasperation when his own last two horses were taken "in the year of the Comet" (1843).

http://www.lsjunction.com/olbooks/smithwic/otd18.htm

My stock of horses had been depleted till I had none left except a blind mare and a colt, the latter a fine little fellow, of which I was very proud. That being the year of a brilliant comet, I called my colt Comet. The mare being stone blind I had no apprehension of their being stolen, so I let them run loose, they seldom being out of sight of the house. But there came a morning when the blaze of the Comet failed to catch my eye when I sallied forth in search of it. Looking about I found moccasin tracks and at once divined that the horses were stolen.

When I found by the trail that there were only two Indians, I thought I could manage them, so I took my rifle and struck out on the trail, to which the colt's tracks gave me the clue. Crossing Coleman's creek I found where the mare had apparently stumbled in going up the bank and fallen. Coming to a clump of cedars a short distance beyond the creek and not daring to venture into it, I skirted around and picked up the trail on the further side, where the Indians, seemingly disgusted with the smallness of the haul, turned back toward the prairie. I kept right along the trail, and on gaining the top of the rise above "Half Acre," discovered the missing animals feeding.

I looked to the priming of my gun, and then scanning the vicinity without perceiving any sign of Indians, went to the mare, near by which on a tree I found a piece of dried bear meat, of which I took possession. It was then quite late in the afternoon and I had left home without eating any breakfast, but I had recovered my horses and felt in a good humor with the world. I went to the village, where I recounted the adventure, exhibiting the bear meat as a witness thereto. The boys swore that when the Indians found that the horses were mine they brought them back and left the meat as a gift of atonement.

The sequel, however, which came a few days later, developed the fact that they only abandoned the mare and colt to get a bigger haul, which they made in Well's prairie, and coming on back again, picked up the mare and colt, which they failed to return.

I was mad to recklessness. Taking my rifle on my shoulder and my saddle on my back, I walked four miles to Colonel Jones' to borrow a horse to pursue the marauders. With others who had suffered by the raid we followed on up to Hoover's bend on the Colorado, ten miles above Burnet, where upon breaking camp, they scattered in every direction; but here my Comanche lore came to direct the search.

Going to the ashes where the camp fire had been, I found a twig stuck in the ground with a small branch pointing northward, it having been so placed to guide stragglers. Taking the course indicated, we soon had the satisfaction of seeing the trail increasing, and presently some one called out: "Here's the Comets track." Guided by the Comet, we kept on to the Leon river, where were encamped the Lipan and Tonkawas, friendly tribes. They were in a state of commotion over the loss of their horses, the Keechis, who were the marauders in this instance, having taken them as they passed.

We followed them twenty days but never came up with them.

So it wasn't as if the Comanches were driven off in the aftermath of the Plum Creek fight, just that conditions on the Texan side of the plains probably weren't condusive to large raiding parties.

...and Noah Smithwick was a good man.

Birdwatcher

Very interesting quotations, Mike. By these lights, it would appear that "It's the economy, stupid!" applied then as much as it does now. Economic motivation is powerful motivation, and large societies don't exist without it.

And I have to say I want to read more of Mr. Smithwick!

Ya, before reading stuff again for this thread I too was viewing Comanches as "typical" Horse Indians going to war for status etc...

Well, I'm sure they did, but turns out there was this huge pragmagtic angle too. Fer example, everyone here would understand the motives of the Scot James Kirker and at least a few former Texas Rangers actively participating the in the Apache scalp trade beginning in the latter 1840's when Mexico began paying bounties. They were in it for the money.

We would even accord Kirker's Shawnee crew the same motives; being acculturated Eastern tribesmen they were in it for the money too.

But here's the deal, Hamanleinen points out that the COMANCHES down in Mexico, who at that time would form large encampments down there for months, got involved in this trade in a big way too.... NOT yer stereotypical Plains Indians, at least not the ones in popular remembrance.

A similar case, I also have had another book knocking around for years, David Paul Smith's "Frontier Defense in the Civil War: Texas Rangers and Rebels" (1992). Upon first read it seemed cripplingly dull, even given the topic, and frankly it is, devoting most of its time to the repeated organization and reorganization of various units scrambling to both secure the border against pro-Union irregulars and Confederate deserters, enforce the draft, and when they could find the time (not much), fight Indians.

Two things in there especially relevant to this thread. Smith gives the far Texas Frontier populations in 1860 as being just 5,000 Whites (as opposed to 600,000 in the whole state), that figure doubling the next year. Whatever ever the actual figures, the portion of the Texas population actually being flayed by Comanche raids was small compared to the state as a whole, even less compared to the nation. Probably important in seeking to understand why just a few hundred raiding savages were allowed to hold up civilization in that part of the world for eight long years after the War Between the States.

Although Smith does point out that in the 1850's, fully 25% of US forces in the field were deployed on the Texas Frontier.

Smith also gives 1860 as the year that raiding Comanches and Kiowas started to drive off cattle in a big way. This is of interest to me because, while you can run horses and mules probably at least as fast as those ridden by your pursuers and so escape given any kind of head start, you can't do that while driving a herd of cows, at least not to my knowledge.

Ergo, in 1860 and thereafter, Comanche raiders after cattle likely felt that either nobody was gonna come after them, or if they did they would be able to handle the opposition.

Perhaps this was partly due to the absence of that Federal unit that would a training ground for some future prominent Confederates; "Jeff Davis's Own", Robert E. Lee's outfit the US 2nd Cavalry, actively patrolling the Texas frontier in the late 1850's, and once in a while even catching Indians.

The stated reason for the shift to rustling cattle on the part of the Comanches? Trade of course, meeting the increasing demand in the Indian Territory and New Mexico.

Birdwatcher

If we're gonna talk about the Great Raid of 1840, it would help to show the ground...



In 1840 Austin was still new, San Antonio being the largest community in Texas (I believe it would continue to hold that distinction until the arrival or air conditioning made life in Texas bearable to the masses). The distance between Austin and San Antonio was about eighty miles of mostly treeless prairie, said prairies extending in patches at least eastward past Bastrop on the Colorado River.

Thus the events of the raid as they transpired were conducted over terrain far more open back then than it is at present.

Noah Smithwick was living in Webber's Prairie, a few miles below Bastrop, and Colonel Fisher, still nominal commander of the Frontier Regiment in San Antonio, was over by the Brazos (the next river east of Bastrop) raising a company to fight for the Federalist faction in Mexico. At least a faction of that Federalist Army camped along the Medina, which on the scale of this map would be right against the dot signifying San Antonio.

Moore's strictly chronological narrative ("Savage Frontier") is irritating in the book as it leads him to constantly jump between locations within Texas, presenting disparate events as they unfolded along a timeline.

But he uses this style to advantage when covering the Great Raid, presenting the growing alarm among the Texas Settlements as different travellers encountered the tracks of a huge war party, heading south.

As the Comanches moved down south from their territory, they made a glancing evening blow against the fortified structure known as Kenney's Fort... about twenty five miles north of Austin.... where they were met by intense rifle fire...

About fifty volunteers arrived the next morning, but the pursuit party found that they were too late to catch the bdoy of Indians....

The first notice that the Indians were on the move came on August 5th 1840, Dr Joel Ponton and Tucker Foley were en route to Gonzales [~60 miles east of San Antone on the Guadalupe, about where the "O" in "Antonio" is on the map] from the Lavaca settlements [tweny miles further east again] ... the two were attacked by twenty-seven mounted Comanches.


Dr Ponton, two arrows lodged in his back after a three mile running chase, managed to dismount when his horse was fatally wounded and hide in dense cover along a creek, the account doesn't mention a gun but possibly the Comanches feared to get shot if they chased him into cover. Dr Ponton survived, Mr Foley was far less fortunate: Taking him alive the Comanches skinned the soles of his feet and made him walk within earshot of Ponton, having Foley beg Ponton to come out while they tortured him to death.

Ponton waited until the Indians were long gone... and made his way back to the Lavaca settlements that night... [At the Lavaca Settlements] Adam Zumwalt organized thirty-six men and they set out towards Gonzales the next morning.

That same day (August 6th), a Reverend Morril was en route eastbound from his place upriver from Victoria with a wagon drawn by a brace of oxen. The Reverend Morril wrote...

..between the Guadalupe and Lavaca rivers, I saw clouds of smoke rise up and suddenly pass away, answered by corresponding signs in other directions. We passed in the wagons just in the rear and across the tracks of the Indians as they went down. from their trail I thought, and afterwards found I was correct, that there were four or five hundred... I trembled for the settlements below, for I knew this meant war on a larger scale than usual.


Meanwhile, Moore writes...

The mail carrier from Austin to Gonzales happened upon a large, fresh Indian trail crossing the road in the vicinity of Plum Creek [on the map about mid way between San Antonio and Bastrop]. The Indians appeared to be bearing down toward the coast... This courier brought word to Gonzales on Thursday August 6th.

I'll bet being a mailman was an iffy propostion during those years

Ben McCulloch [arm still impaired from the duel with Ross the previous year] organized a twenty-four man volunteer party to investigate the tracks. Captain McCulloch's rode out east from Gonzales about 4pm [with maybe 4 hours of daylight remaining, they made sixteen miles that day before making camp][/b].

Meanwhile, while McCulloch was just starting out and while Zumwalt's force were finishing up burying the unfortunate Tucker Foley, the Comanches were 50 miles further South already, just arriving at Victoria....

About 4:00pm, on August 6th, the 500-plus Comanche party arrived on the outskirts of Victoria. They first killed four black servants above Victoria. The townspeople were completely oblivious to the danger as the Indians approached...

As the panic set in, the Victorians fled for their lives... A small party of the men, numbering thirtten, hurried to confront the attacking Indians. Although too small in number to stop such a massive attack, the men hoped to at least buy time for their wives and children to flee to safety. The citizen party had no chance..

[A Victoria resident later wrote of the raid] "Some Mexican traders were in Victoria at the time with about 500 head of horses on the prairie in the vicinity of town. All these the Comanches captured, besides a great many belonging to citizens of the place."

The victorious Indians retired from town and camped for the night three miles further south on Spring Creek. There they killed a settler and two black men, and they captured a black girl. They had secured about fifteen hundred horses and mules on the prairie in front of Victoria, a large portion of which had just arrived en route east.

During the night, a group of men from Victoria who still had horses left town in search of reinforcements... to the Cuero Settlement where Captain Tumlinson's volunteer company was raised [NNW of Victoria about 30 miles, just west of the direction the Comanches had appeared from and more or less mid-way between Victoria and Gonzales].

Thus the Comanches came rapidly down from the north, passing east of and undetected by the citizens of Gonzales and Cuero, those same communties escaping depredations or killings that we know of. Cuero must have been a sizeable community by the standards of the day, sixty five men were raised there by morning, notwithstanding the necessarily late-night arrival (early hours of the morning?) of the messengers from Victoria.

Fehrenbach ("The Comanches") notes how the Comanches were reluctant to fight inside the town of Victoria itself, else the death toll could have been far higher.

Birdwatcher

Early on the morning of August 7th, Ben Mc Culloch and his party located the Comanche trail...

Early this morning we came upon the trailwhich appears large and well-trodden from which it is estmatated there must be several hundred Indians. At this juncture a party of thirty-six men from the upper La Vaca, and in the lead of Captain A. Zumwalt, joined us.

The joint part of sixty began heading south, following the trail towards Victoria. Around noon, they encountered Captain John Jack Tumlinson in company with sixty-five Cuero men, Tumlinson assuming command of the whole.

Indian raids were ordinarily rather like a nineteenth century drive-by in that the Indians hit hard and got out fast, and the combined militia moved cautiously, expecting to encounter some of the large party they were following at any time. In addition they were under the necessity sending scouts out to screen the settlements along the Guadalupe in case the Indians returned north by that route.

So it was that the combined party of 125 men did not reach Victoria until the late afternoon of the next day (August 8th) finding no Indians duirng that time.

Meanwhile the Reverend Morrel and his ox cart arrived at the Lavaca Settlements on the morning of the 7th, where he learned of the attack on Ponton and Foley. Anxious to warn the residents of his place of residence at LaGrange (thirty miles below Bastrop on the Colorado), he immediately pressed on.

Details written easily now, but doubtless an occasion for much stress at the time. Further south the combined party of 125 volunteers under Tumlinson were cautiously feeling their way towards Victoria. Meanwhile the intrepid Reverend Morrel, doubtless calling upon Divine providence, set out alone across the grasslands in an ox cart....

My oxen were in fine condition. I drove thirty miles in twelve hours

Rev. Morrel reached LaGrange around midnight, and immediately began to prepare to ride upriver to Colonel Edward Burleson's place on the river below Bastrop...

In view of the long race before me, I tried to sleep some, while a horse was being secured, At four oclock in the morning I was in my saddle, intending to reach Colonel Ed. Burleson at daylight, twelve miles off, on a borrowed horse, as I had no horse in a condition for the trip.

Morrel is one of the unsung heroes of Plum Creek, the forces gathered by Burleson would be critical in the victory there five days later.

On the morning of the 7th, while McCulloch and Zumwalt joined forces along the Comanche trail, those same Comanches were still forty or fifty miles away, renewing their assault against Victoria. A few houses were pillaged and burned, but this second attack was driven off by intense rifle fire.

Compared to their Herculean accomplishment of moving so many so fast and with such stealth deep into the settlements, the Comanches covered only ten miles on the 7th, setting up camp twelve miles away from the mercantile port at Linneville, killing one man as they rode, and kidnapping a woman and her infant.

Birdwatcher

Legend has it that the 1824 Mexican Federalist flag flew over the Alamo during that seige. Sources have it that this was unlikely. Although the Texians were divided over whether they were fighting to defend the Mexican Federal 1824 Constitution or were fighting for Texan independence, by the time of the Alamo the sentiment of most was for independence.

Indeed in January of 1836, just two months before the Alamo, most of the pro-Federalist Texans had presumably left, some 200 of them leaving San Antonio and advancing down into Mexico taking their flags with them. What else they took were the supplies stockpiled in that mission, such that it was bare when Santa Anna moved north the next month. Probably Santa Anna would have come north anyway, but the presence of Texans taking sides in intercine conflicts in Mexico likely did nothing to retard that process.

Tejano Federalists under Juan Seguin covered the subsequent retreat of Houston's army before Santa Anna's forces and also fought at San Jacinto, and Seguin himself went on to hold several offices under the Texas Republic.

But the Federalist movement didn't just go away after Texas Independence. Turns out that in 1839, the year before the events in this narrative, the Texas government had dispatched (or maybe dispatched, the early Texas government was a somewhat chaotic entity) more than 100 men from the Frontier Regiment to fight alongside Federalist Forces in Northern Mexico, on at least some occasions these men fighting South of the Rio Grande under a Texas flag.

That being the precursor to the fact that, at the time of the Great Comanche raid in 1840, the erstwhile commander of the Frontier Regiment was 100 miles east of his nominal command, raising a party of adventurers to fight alongside the Mexican Federalists while the leaders of that movement were themselves given sanctuary in Texas.

How this relates to the Great Comanche Raid is this: With the consent and cooperation of the Texas Government, the Mexican Federalist faction maintained an arms depot at Linnville.

Moore in "Savage Frontier" states that Mexican agents allied to the Centralist Faction accompanied the Comanches on the raid. Furthermore, in the aftermath of the Plum Creek fight wherein the Comanches returning from the raid were intercepted, the spoils left scattered on the field were divided among the victors. Moore writes...

James N. Smith received a beaded shot bag with Roman cross designs on it. Inside the bag, Smith found a letter written by a Mexican to one of the Indian chiefs. The Mexican stated that he would "meet the chief at Corpus Christi or Linvil."

Neither Moore, Gwynne ("Empire of the Summer Moon") nor Fehrenbach ("Comanches") mention the capture of armaments during the looting and burning of the trade warehouses at Lynnville. However the presence of firearms there was apparently known to at least one Texan fighting at Plum Creek, of that fight he wrote...

Lying flat on the side of their horse with nothing to be seen but a foot and a hand, they would shoot their arrows under the horse's neck, run to one end of the space, straighten up, wheel their horses, and reverse themselves, always keeping to the opposite side from us.

The line of warriors just behind those chiefs kept up a continuous firing with their escopetos [Spanish smoothbore carbines], doing no damage. But they had some fine rifles taken at Linnville, and these done all the damage.

All of this could still be mere supposition I suppose, but a line of supposition backed by the Texas State Historical Association...

http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/hvl58



So the largest force of Comanches ever to strike the Texas Republic comes down and slips by several settlements, striking Victoria direct on August 6th and 7th, and then lingers in the area, perhaps anticipating a supporting Centralist presence, before moving on to sack Linnville on the early morning of the 8th.

All of this is doubtless old news to TRUE historians, but still, in the context of Texas history this is huge.

Taken in context, the Great Comanche Raid was a result of a short-lived alliance between the Comanches and the Centralist faction in Mexico, working against the Federalist-Texan alliance.

And the Comanches once again emerge as something other than your stereotypical Plains Indians.

Birdwatcher

During the night hours of August 7th a travelling merchant had an even closer escape than Reverend Morrel had with his oxcart when he first witnessed those smoke signals. Turns out the travelling merchant even passed the wagon of the only Comanche victim that day, another merchant like himself.

And interesting to me in that it shows nighttime travel was not all that unusual back then, maybe even common, this being August on the Texas Coastal Plain after all.

Merchant William G. Ewing was travelling from Linnville to Victoria that night. He noticed a great number of campfires along Placido Creek and spotted Stephen's empty wagon. Ewing moved on to Victoria, guessing that the camp was that of Mexican traders bound for Linnville.

The Comanches broke camp early and descended upon Linnville shortly after first light on August 8th. Must be that large-scale trade with Mexico and/or Mexicans was a common thing in that era, Moore has it that when the townspeople of Linnville first saw the Comanches and their large livestock herd approaching, like Ewing had done they just assumed they were Mexican traders.

The Comanche party thoroughly looted and burned Linnville in a leisurely fashion all during the day of August 8th while the helpless residents famously watched from boats in the bay. Actual casualties were few; a late-alerted couple intercepted in the surf while trying to escape to the boats, the husband shot down and the young wife, a recent immigrant fromm Ireland, captured.

North of Victoria, the only posse yet in the field were at that time still cautiously feeling their way down the Guadalupe. Meanwhile, more than 100 miles to the north, the intrepid Reverend Morril arrived at Ed, Burleson's place on his borrowed horse at sunrise. Colonel Burleson immediately saddled up and the two rode on to Bastrop.

I dunno the activities of Col. Burleson over the next two days, it is reported that he contacted superiors in Austin for orders, which he later disregarded when responding to the raid. It should be considered that he was reacting to reports from two days earlier and at least forty miles away pertaining to a Comanche raid, and like Tumlinson's force moving down the Guadalupe, he would have had every expectation that the Comanches would strike hard and justt as quickly withdraw.

It is reported that the intrepid Reverend Morril was sent on yet again on the 8th to bring word to Austin, likely with an official dispatch from Burleson.

Whatever the sequence of events were in Bastrop over the next three days, Burleson and eighty-five volunteers, plus thirteen Tonkawa scouts, left there on August 11th, travelling most of the night to make the rendevous on Plum Creek on the 12th. Reverend Morril was among them.

Birdwatcher

I apologize to all for not reading the whole thread but am just finishing up Empire of the Summer Moon this weekend, saw the thread title and chimed in. Great book DocR and all.

Dont apologize for not reading the whole thread, most of it is me flapping my gums anyhow. Heck I ain't even sure if anyone's still reading...

Anyhoo...

The same time the Comanches were finishing up at Linnville, Tumlinson's 125 men were finally arriving at Victoria. That evening 25 men of the party were replaced with a like number of new volunteers on the basis of their horses. Tumlinson's force was essentially a scratch force summoned at short notice two days and more than fifty miles previously. The condition of their horseflesh would play a major role in determining Tumlinson's activities over the next three days.

That evening, Tumlinson's party tarried but briefly at Victoria and before heading out eastward towards Linnville, stopping to rest along the road around around midnight.

On the part of the Comanches, the usual practice was to bring multiple mounts, plus they had all those other horses they had lifted.

Much has been made of the Comanche's lack of caution during this raid, boldly lingering around the settlements as they did and then heading back north in a sort of grand processional, livestock and loot in tow.

But from a Comanche perspective, they had at least 500 warriors on hand, presumably all loaded for bear by their lights. Also, one is hard pressed to find occasions prior to Plum Creek (which wouldn't occur for another three days) where Texans had drawn significant Comanche blood in open battle.

I can recall reading of only two, not including the Council House Fight which hardly counts:

In February of '39, one Captain Moore and a party of rangers and Lipan Apaches had killed perhaps fifty Comanches when they succeeded in surprising a camp on the San Saba, but on that occasion after the first bloodletting Moore's force was quickly placed on the defensive and the Comanches ran away with all the rangers' horses. (Smithwick was along on that fight http://www.lsjunction.com/olbooks/smithwic/otd16.htm ).

Only other occasion I can think of was when Captain John Bird and thirty men chased a party of Comanches out onto the prairie in May of '39 and found themselves facing about three hundred. This is the fight usually given as the "gee-if'n-they-only-had-revolvers" example. Not often mentioned is the fact that in the ensuing fight Bird's force killed more than thirty Comanches with their rifles for a loss of only five of their own.

So, other than those two examples, the Comanches probably felt justified in their confidence. The LAST time they had faced large numbers of White soldiers, four months previously outside the walls of Mission San Juan after the Council House fight, the soldiers had refused to come out and fight.

The actions of the Texans opposing them on their jaded horses over the next three days would do little to change that impression.

Birdwatcher

I'm still reading, Birdie.

A lot of Dead Man's Walk is about how ineffectual the early whites were against the Comanch.

Yep, reading, stop in nightly for my dose... keep going.

Seems to me the biggest problem in fighting Comanches was catching them.

One constant in Native warfare everywhere throughout the Frontier was that incredible feats of human endurance on their part were almost routine. When it came to Texas, fighting Comanches usually meant pushing man and beast beyond what Europeans were comfortable with.

Jack Hays knew that and we are given to understand that he learned it from his Delaware and Lipan Apache allies. RIP Ford mentions it too. People like those guys prevailed in combat regularly but they were few and far between, hence their widespread fame. My contention has been that relative to that, breech loading rifles and revolving handguns made little difference.

Heck, even flintlocks worked, another factor throughout our history being the fact that Americans commonly went armed. On this raid 500 skilled and deadly Native warriors killed maybe twenty people. Just one victim per every 25 warriors in the field. By way of contrast Moore recounts how similarly large Comanche raids into Mexico at about this same time killed as many as 700 in a single raid.

Turns out Americans maybe weren't that hard to raid, but closing in and actually killing them often cost more blood than the Comanches were willing to bear. At least it did on this raid.

The other factor limiting our guys seems to have been fieldcraft; hard to accept but compared to Natives, it seems like most Euros were blind out on the Prairie. Most every success was guided by Natives, and in a few epic failures Native guides were conspicuously absent.

Anyways, back to the narrative, and the map...



One thing the Texans did right during the raid was their willingness to drop everything and assemble, and their routine acts of heroism for the common good. Tumlinson's men themselves had spontaneously come together in a single morning from three separate communities each thirty miles apart. This is what Ben McCulloch had to say about the reception this posse met in Victoria on the evening of the 8th.

We find the inhabitants in much agitation, and under apprehension of further molestation by Indians. Many families are assembled in houses centrally situated, and eligible for defense; the nine pounder is mounted at an angle of the square, and every preparation is made for the worst....

Our men are cordially received and handsomely treated by the citizens of Victoria, which inspires us with increased good feeling towards them as a community, and with a lively regard for their protection and safety.

I shoulda mentioned that when Tumlinson's party stopped for the night, one man, George Kerr, continued on alone through the night (another one of those acts of selfless heroism) to contact settlements further east, both to spread the word and to coordinate with other parties that might be in the field.

The next morning he encountered forty five men under Captain Clark Owen coming west. Kerr also sent on a letter to La Grange, again perhaps forty or fity miles to the north (the long range communication once again amazes here), a message aimed at Burleson, thirty miles further north yet again.

The snippet of this letter Moore includes in "Savage Frontier" (where most of this info is coming from) is notable in that it is the first in ink to mention the vicinity of Plum Creek. Seems like it was almost ESP the way the common perception among these disparate parties was that mid-way between Bastrop and Austin was where the Comanches were to be met, if they were to be stopped at all.

Tumlinson himself was to send a handful of his men ahead to Plum Creek to get ahead of the Comanche host while he brought up the rear. This from Kerr's letter, dispatched on the 9th, presumably relating the size and location of the Comanche force, the attack on Victoria and the sacking of Linnville....

"Let Burleson be informed of this and move on to intercept the Indians between the Guadalupe and La Baca...

Might be the concept originated with Tumlinson himself. That message was dispatched on the 9th, presumably it was in Burleson's hands the next day, the day before he set out from Bastrop towards Plum Creek with his force.

Birdwatcher

Another thing that contributed to success was going on the offensive. When the Texans or Norte Americanos were responding to a raid, they were on the defensive. When they started scalphunting (as repulsive as that practice is and was) they were on the offensive and started being successful. Of course, many times those scalps actually came from Mexicans or friendly Indians but...

I too am still reading. I enjoy your posts and thanks for the effort and suggestions on further readings.

Good points.

Meanwhile, maybe fifteen miles east of Victoria on the morning of the 9th, the Comanche force passed between Tumlinson and Owen going north. One can only imagine the sentiments of those who had been two and three days on the trail when finally catching sight of the enormous Comanche host. Captain Owen had sent three men forward as scouts, one was killed and one outran his pursuers, the third received some hard-won mementos.

John Menefree, a San Jacinto veteran and Texas Congressman, was struck in the body with seven arrows piercing him. He somehow managed to escape and hide in some drift brush along the creek bank until the Comanches passed on. Menefree walked and crawled to a nearby ranch the following day.

He had managed to pull the seven arrows from his own body. Although suffering from serious blood loss, he survived, and would keep the seven arrows in his Jackson County home for years.

Mostly I'm impressed that he had the foresight to hang onto them arrows and bring them along even in his extremity, musta been a born optimist...

As for Tumlinson's party...

...they finally came in sight of their adversary about 10am. They were located about five miles south of DeLeon's ranch and were issuing from the woods onto the verge of the prairie.

One wonders what it was like to finally come upon the enormous host they had been trailing for days.

Gonzales volunteer Washington Miller found the Comanches to be "hideously bedaubed after their own savage taste". Some wore feathers. Others were "sporting huge helmets of buffalo or elk horns - armed with glistening shields, with bows and quivers with guns and lances, and mounted on their chargers, dashing about with streamers" flying behind them. He estimated the Comanche force to be "from 400 to 500"

Tumlinson advanced and dismounted to attack. Actually dismounting to inflict accurate rifle fire has been a much-maligned tactic in print, but it seems to have been a standard one among the Eastern Tribes when out on the plains, and was used by the aforementioned Captain Bird when inflicting casualties at a rate of six to one in 1839. The trick being to reserve your fire such that some members of the group are alsways loaded. Worth noting that those Comanches on this raid who were armed with rifles did the very same thing.

A large number of their warriors encircled the Texans to keep the Texans at bay while other Indians herded their large drove of horses forward

A tactic attempted again at Plum Creek.

Alfred Kelso, sheriff of Gonzales, drew first blood this day. His target was a daring turkey-plumed Comanche chief with lance and shield. As the Comanche moved tauntingly close, Kelso dropped him from his horse with a well-directed shot.

Washington Miller continues... "They whirl about us, exibiting the most admirable feats of horsemanship and, being continually in motion, were less liable to be struck by our balls, But it was seldom they withdrew from their daring sallies without leaving upon the ground some indubitable evidence of the skilled use of our arms. Discovering the fate of several of their number, they became more wary, and kept at a more respectful distance.

Those among them using escopetas and rifles dismount and play upon us from the grass, at about one hundred and fifty paces."


Moore records that Ben McCulloch for one was agitating for a charge on the Texan's part, but that Tumlinson held back out of regard for the condition of his men and their horses. Indeed, Moore writes that the Texans were suffering excessively from the heat, their first move after this twenty-minute skirmish being to seek water.

Again, ya gotta be on the Texas Coastal Plain in August to fully appreciate their condition.

What followed for the next two days with Tumlinson's force was a sort of prolonged standoff, Tumlinson's group along with thirty-seven men of Owen's force trailing close behind the Comanches, even stopping for the night close on their tail. The Comanches unwilling to face Tumlinson's rifles, most of the rangers on played-out horses.

Meanwhile Ben McCulloch had separated from the group on the evening of the 9th.

Captain McCulloch, seething with anger that he had been unable to bring Tumlinson to force a charge all day, decided that the Texans had missed their golden opportunity. Ben McCulloch turned his GOnzales company over to a lieutentant and departed with three trusted men.... Riding hard for Gonzales throughout the night. He was determined to find more men who would aid him in fighting the Indians.

Hard to second-guess the situation form this distance, but worth noting that even such worthies as Sheriff Kelso stayed with Tumlinson. Also worth noting that McCulloch and his three companions all had horses that would stand the all-night trip.

McCulloch made it to Gonzales on the 10th, and dispatched one of his companions to find Burleson.

He dispatched Gipson with a note to the Colorado River to raise up edward Burleson to join with recruits. McCulloch asked Burleson to designate the crossing at Plaum Creek as the rendevous site for volunteers that could be raised.

No word on how the worthy Gipson managed to endure through his prolonged ordeal but word did get though, most likely reaching Burleson early on the 11th, the same day Burleson departed from Bastrop.

While the weary and saddlesore Gipson was hurring to Burleson, Tumlinson's men did make a charge at some point on the 10th of August, scattering some Comanches and recovering some of the loot, but the Rangers were simply unable to press the advantage. Afterwards, they resumed their position, shadowing the Comanche force, Tumlinson sending a small group of the best-mounted men ahead, to Plum Creek.

So the stage was set....

Birdwatcher

Extremely interesting story. Please continue when you have time.

"Seems to me the biggest problem in fighting Comanches was catching them"

Yep, reading Wilbarger's book time after time after a raid the posse chases the Comanche but can't come up with them.

Lots of great reading here.
I'm sort of flipping between here and the Smithwick stories, he was obviously a very observant man.

Birdwatcher, thank you for sharing so much knowledge with us.

Actually, what I get from all of this is that the Plains Indians were defeated and defanged by the Sharps Buffalo Guns. Pretty grim events took place up until the buff runners waxed the herds. Adobe Walls sure didn't hurt the cause either.

"Commanche Empire," the author of which presently eludes me, is also an insightful history of the Commanches and the economic and political breadth of their society.

Pekka Hamalainen is the author, a Finn, turns out he's a Professor at UC Santa Barbara. I bought the book for this thread, shoulda bought it couple of years back when Sycamore pm'ed me about it. Little did I know it weren't one more of the same'ol same'ol Texan-centic versions which I was familiar with.

But again, in the context of twenty thousand Comanches extant in 1840, most of whom lived hundreds of miles away, the Great Comanche Raid, at a loss of maybe eighty dead, maybe weren't in itself that major an event, leastways not like it looms in our Texas history.

It did at least demonstrate that Texas was a whole different kettle of fish than Mexico. Comanches would still sporadically steal horses, plunder and kill at least as far as Bexar and Travis Counties for the next two decades or more, but always in small and elusive parties.

Anyhoo... I have a better map with more relevant place names, unfortunately with modern county lines and names obscuring things a bit...



We left off on the night of the ninth, following Tumlinson's Raiders who had picked up the trail on the 6th, followed it south to Victoria while expecting the Comanches to return hell-for-leather at any time as they typically did. These Rangers then finally coming upon the Comanches just north of Linnville (the site of Linnville located just outside where Port Lavaca now stands), east of Victoria on the morning of the 9th.

For future reference, the Battle of Plum Creek would be fought shortly after sunrise on the 12th, four days after the sack of Linnville. The battle site lies just outside the present town of Lockhart.

Mounting alarms had gone out, and doubtless many unheralded individuals had hastened home to carry word to kin and to protect their loved ones, heedless of the risk to themselves. In that age before mass communcation each messenger carried the news as they had experienced or heard it prior to their departure. Likewise men mustered as they were able, some limited by a lack of horses, others doubtless tending to their own affairs first. The community of Gonzales for example would muster at least three separate groups of rangers over these few days.

So it is that word of the attack on Victoria reached the Lavaca River settlements near modern-day Halletsville on the evening of the 7th. A group of twenty-two men elected one Lafayette Ward as their Captain and headed due west, like everyone else anticipating that the Comanche war party would be speedily running back home.

Coming across the two day-old Comanche trail going south, and seeing no sign of their return, they concluded as Tumlinson and his volunteers had done that the Comanches would return on a more westward route and pushed on to Gonzales on the Guadalupe, arriving there on the morning of the 9th, at about the same time Tumlinson and his men were engaging the Comanches perhaps sixty or seventy miles away down by Linnville.

Most all Texans of that era would have wondered at the absence in this narrative of one of the most prominent and active of border defenders; Captain Matthew "Old Paint" Caldwell, then 42 years of age. Hard to do justice to the man here, suffice to say Caldwell had been one of the signers of the Texas Declaration of Independence and at the time of the raid held the rank of Captain in the Texas First Regiment of Infantry.

As such, it does seem possible that he had access in 1839 to one of those new Paterson Colts but no mention is made of it. Certainly Patersons figure scarcely at all in accounts of Plum Creek.

Earlier in 1840, Caldwell had been outside the Council House and unarmed when that lethal fracas broke out and was reduced to defending himself by throwing rocks. He did receive a leg wound, possible from friendly fire. The following year he would lead a company in the ill-fated Santa-Fe Expedition (the basis for "Dead Man's Walk") and endure months of brutal captivity. Back in Texas by 1842, he would lead a Texas force to victory against Mexican General Woll's forces outside of San Antonio. He collapsed and died at home later that same year, some said as a result of hardships endured.

As we shall see later, Caldwell did have a knack for short and to-the-point speeches prior to battle. It was Matthew Caldwell that Ben McCulloch had probably been hoping to find when he left Tumlinson's party trailing the Comanches on the evening of the 9th and ridden all night to Gonzales.

Ironically, when word of the huge war party had first reached Gonzales via the mail carrier on the 6th, Caldwell had been away... leading a party in response to another Comanche War party to the west, returning to Gonzales on the 9th to find all hell broken loose, at least by word of courier and rumor.

That same day Caldwell met Ward and the Lavaca men in Gonzales who informed him that the Comanches had not come back up to the east after their attack on Victoria. Like everyone else, Caldwell assumed that time was of the essence as the Comanches must certainly be even then riding hard up-country. Since they were not east, and had not come up the Guadalupe, Caldwell concluded they must be coming up west of that river. Furthermore, they were most likely to ford that stream going north at the ford on the Camino Real, where New Braunfels now stands, the same ford where Smithwick had his brush with death earlier in this thread.

Nothwithstanding the oppressive August heat and the prior labors of everyone present, Ward's party joined Caldwell's, and within a hour of their meeting fifty-nine men under Caldwell hurried westward, directly away from the actual route being followed by the Comanches. The force rode through the night, reaching Seguin on the morning of the 10th. The very same morning Ben McCulloch and his three companions reached Gonzales.

Fortunately for all concerned, word of the Comanche attack on Linnville on the 8th had reached Gonzales on the 9th, some hours after Caldwell's departure. Immediately an active young man on a fast horse was dispatched to catch Caldwell's party.

As Caldwell and Ward's companies reached the Seguin area on the morning of August 10th they encountered courier Robert Hall, another Gonzales man. He was sent to find Caldwell's men to relay the word of the attacks on Victoria and Linnville.

John Henry Brown noted that Hall arrived "on foaming steed" to announce that the Indians were retreating directly up the trail they had made on the way down.

Next we get an example of that seemingly remarkable consensus common to all the disparate and separate parties of Texans in the field when they heard the Comanches were indeed coming back up east of Gonzales after all....

Captain Caldwell announced that his forces must move at once to meet the Indians at Plum Creek. "After rest and breakfast and strengthened by a few recruits," wrote Brown, "we moved on and camped that night on the Old San Antonio crossing of the San Marcos."

Note that on the map the course of the San Marcos River determines the squiggly line between modern Guadalupe and Caldwell Counties, perhaps twenty miles northeast of Seguin en route to Plum Creek.

Interesting the common urge of EVERYONE in this narrative to hurry, even though their destinations lay hours away. Their seemed to be a consensus that just minutes could count even after an all-day ride on failing horses.

Such would prove to be tbe case at Plum Creek.

Birdwatcher

History (or at least the books I got) does not record the sentiments of Ben McCulloch when, after four days on the trail, he rode all night into Gonzales on the morning of the 10th direct from tailing the Comanche party, only to find that possibly the premier Indian fighter of his day, Matthew Caldwell, had left town the previous evening with fifty-nine armed men in exactly the wrong direction.

A second courier was immediately sent out, the people in Gonzales having no way of knowing that Robert Hall ahd caught up to Caldwell that same morning at Seguin, Caldwell immediately reversing course and heading for Plum Creek.

McCulloch waited in Gonzales for Caldwell for what must have seemed a very long 24 hours, while yet another group of volunteers were mustered under Captain James Bird. Before dawn on the 11th, McCulloch's younger brother Henry rode out to a tall hill fifteen miles east of Gonzales and from that eminence saw the Comanches on the move, still shadowed by Tumlinson's group of more than 100 men.

Henry McCulloch returned to Gonzales at the gallop and the party of thirty three men started out at once, pushing hard to get to Plum Creek in time to intercept the Comanches. They must have been well-mounted, because they were the first of all parties to make the rendevous.

Meanwhile, up on the San Marcos, Caldwell's party, with less distance to cover, made slower time...

Captains Ward and Caldwell moved out from the San Marcos River on the morning of August 11th to effect a rendezvous. John Henry Brown of Ward's company recalled...

"The 11th was intensely hot, and out ride was chiefly over a burnt prairie, the flying ashes being blinding to the eyes. Waiting some hours at noon, watching for the approach of the enemy after night, we arrived at Good's cabin, on the Gonzales and Austin road, a little east of Plum Creek."

Also arriving at Plum Creek that same evening were Major General Felix Huston and Captain George Howard. The hot-headed Huston was the guy who had wounded Albert Sydney Johnson in a duel a couple of years earlier. One author characterized Huston as "a typical military adventurer" whose "actual personal service in Texas was more obstreperous than effective". By virtue of rank, Huston would assume command of the Texan force at Plum Creek.

(Point of interest to some here, Huston would relocate to New Orleans that same year to practice law.)

Captain Howard of the First Regiment will appear again on this thread, like Caldwell he would be captured with the Santa Fe expedition the next year. Huston escaped from captivity, made his way through the wilds back to Texas, and went on to serve with distinction in the Mexican War.

The combined party waiting for the Comanches at Plum Creek, approximately 100 men, finally went to camp around midnight, the aforemetioned Robert Hall and Henry McCulloch being given the daunting task of riding south into the night to locate the Comanche force.

While Ben McCulloch had been waiting in Gonzales on the 10th, and Cadwell's force had been making their weary way towards the San Marcos, Captain Edward Burleson over in Bastrop had been sending for volunteers...

Thomas Monroe Hardeman and Susan Burleson, cousin of Edward Burleson, were enjoying their wedding ceremony. Guests from many miles away had assembled to watch the wedding. One of Burleson's riders had appeared just as the happy party was enjoying a toast to the bride.

Just as quickly as the horseman dashed into the yard with the warning from Colonel Burleson, "the table was deserted" as the able men raced to help."

Burleson departed Bastrop on the 11th with close to 100 men, pushing on through the day and most of the night. Jonathan Burleson, brother of Edward, was sent on an errand.

Jonathan Burleson had rounded up Chief Placido and twelve of his Tonkawa scouts. They set out at 10pm on August 11 to join up with Colonel Burleson's main forces. Placido and his men ran on foot throughout the night. Placido keeping one hand on Jonathan Burleson's knee as he trotted with his Tonkawas alongside.

Best guess, Placido (whos Tonkawa name meant "Can't Kill Him") woulda been about forty at the time. Eighteen years later he would still be in the field, at that time scouting for Ford's expedition against the very same Buffalo Hump leading the Great Raid.

Dunno exactly how many folks he might have eaten during that time, but Ford for one wrote highly of him.

Birdwatcher

The behavior of the Comanches through all of this is something of a mystery. One really wishes that someone woulda thought to visit with Buffalo Hump and write his biography, surely he would have had much to contribute to our knowledge of the OTHER side of the Texas frontier in those years. Prob'ly wouldn't have been hard to do, the guy was quite accessible in his later years...

http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fbu12



The fact that several hundred Comanches could be 100 miles behind the settlement line before anyone really knew it is not surprising. Clearly Victoria and Linnville were the objectives from the beginning. It is entirely possible too that the route had been carefully scouted beforehand, it would have been hardly difficult for a handful of Comanches to perform this task.

As for the timing of the raid, Moore has it that may have been as the result of the advice of Mexican agents. It seems just as likely to me that the big treaty conference up at Bent's Fort that same summer coulda held things up.

I'm wondering too at what time of year were the warehouses at Linnville likely to be the most full and if that could have affected the timing of the raid. Seems like the purchasing power of their Texan customer base would peak in the late summer/fall after the harvests were in. But then the folks at Linnville must have traded extensively with Mexicans and Tejanos too, hence their initial assumption that the approaching Comanches that morning with their large herd of horses and mules were Mexican traders.

Up until they sacked Linnville on the 8th the tightly choreographed discipline in the Comanche ranks can be explained. What puzzles is afterwards, on the way back. A frequent MO of later frontier raids would be that the Comanches would arrive in a body, set up camp, and fan out to simultaneously hit separate ranches.

On this raid we get NO reports of groups of Comanches fanning out on their own hook, despite the relatively enormous group of warriors on hand. Consider that the aforementioned John Menifree was able to walk and crawl to a ranch after being stuck with seven arrows down by Linnville, said ranch being left intact despite the huge number of Comanche warriors in the immediate area (if they ran off their horses too nobody recorded it).

And though the Comanches were driving about 2,000 stolen horses and mules at this point, the seeming enormity of that haul dimishes considerably in the light of the fact that the herd would presumably be divided among the at the very least 400 warriors participating.

Might be that the quantity and quality of the loot garnered from the warehouses at Linnville was enough to keep their collective attention on the way home, such that defending the pack train became a primary objective. I'll leave it to a real Historian to research the size of that haul and compare it to the volume of goods available, say, at a Comanchero trade fair and the value thereof.

Tumlinson's men, doggedly tailing the Comanches through three whole days in the endless heat on weary mounts, would miss participating in the fight at Plum Creek entirely. That fight would turn into a running skirmish, running AWAY from Tumlinson, perhaps nine out of ten of the Indians getting away clean, at least with their lives. But if Tumlinson had kept the Comanches worried about their loot and therefore close to the driven herd during their return trip throught the settlements, he may have saved some lives.

If the Comanches even threw out any scouts in advance on their way back, such is not recorded. A puzzle fer example that Henry McCulloch had been able to occupy that high solitary hill unopposed on the morning of the 11th and see the whole body of Indians. Were I Henry, I would have expected Comanche lookouts to be already up there.

Actually I'm sure he was keenly aware of that possibility at the time, his solo ride towards the biggest bunch of raiding Indians anyone had ever seen being one of those acts easy to relate after the fact, but probably a cause of no little anxiety at the time.

The Comanches made pretty good time on the return trip, considering they were driving 2,000 head of stock plus what must have been at least 1,000 horses they had brung with 'em. Multiple mounts were common on Comanche Raids, as they were soon to be among the rangers going out against them.

A straight line from Linnville to the Plum Creek fight site is about 100 miles long, prob'ly a bit more. The morning of the ninth the Comanches were down by Linnville, the morning of the 12th they were crossing Plum Creek, meaning they were covering 30-40 miles a day, in the same heat written about by the Texans.

Nobody seems to mention unusual thirst in their accounts, indicating that 1840 had not been a drought year, in which case water and forage along the route would have been largely absent. Still, watering 3,000 head on that return journey must have been time-consuming.

Birdwatcher

"Nobody seems to mention unusual thirst in their accounts, indicating that 1840 had not been a drought year, in which case water and forage along the route would have been largely absent. Still, watering 3,000 head on that return journey must have been time-consuming."

Not realy Birdy. Think on it a bit. The Comanches were moving, for them, relatively slowly. Many accounts of raiders covering 100 miles in 24 hours.

Now what is happening is the best horses and mules are going to be in the lead of the general heard and will be able to snatch a drink and a few mouthfulls of forage at any water point before the least able come up and push them on. The weakest, poorest would be at the very back of the heard and would not have time for anything. The Comanche knew that the best mounts would survive and the poorest be lost as was always the case on any raid. Many accounts in Wilbarger of Indians abandoning horses and mules when they were retreating from a strike when the animals could not keep up.
How much playing with their new gotten goods delayed them is open to question as you say. By the description of the way they were arrayed, top hats, parasols, bolts of cloth streaming from their ponies tails etc it must have been some.

As an aside: What was the main cause of the demise of the Comanche. IMO his total inability to be anything but a Comanche.

Carry on.

Boggy,

I was hoping that someone with experience with livestock would chime in

Maybe it was the mules holding them up, those bearing the loot from Linnville (and again, one wishes we knew just how many mules that was).

Sorta related, and pertinent elsewhere in the thread...

In your opinion, about how fast and how far could you push a herd of longhorns, like if you were in a big hurry?

Thanks,

Birdwatcher

Birdy I have no experience with Longhorns they are pretty tough. Usual trail herd distance was 8-10 miles a day but they were grazing as they went.
On a stamped longhorns have been known to go twenty miles but were completely played out and not fit for much. Certainly not a continued drive.
What we are looking for is how far and fast can you push a herd of cattle and keep going for more than one or two days.
From what I have read from Goodnight, Dobie and others about 15 miles a day for four days is about the best that could be done or hoped for. After that what were not dead would need two days to recruit.

Interesting observation. The apparent lack of "look-outs" as noted below in your narrative suggests that the Comanches were either aware of their pursuers and keeping their scouts' eyes directed rearward, or that they'd made unmolested returns from raiding parties so many times that they didn't consider the pursuit worthy of concern.



The fact that the Comanches were making 30-40 miles per day argues against them driving cattle, which I doubt could manage even half that pace. Maybe longhorns can go farther, but modern beef cattle are hard-pressed to do 8-10 miles in my limited experience.

Again, I suspect the apparent lack of Comanche scouts on McCulloch's hill may or may not be significant. They'd be mobile scouts, not stationary pickets, so McCulloch could've come up on the hill 5 minutes after a Comanche scout had left and wouldn't know it.

Again, I wonder whether the Comanches were simply indifferent to the idea of pursuit due to 200 years' experience of not being seriously pursued after raids.

Good stuff, Mike!

Being all worked up from victory and big plunder the Comanche may have been unafraid of what was ahead also. I'm still hangin' with this thread.

My vote is for indifference/unafraid. With 400 warriors? Where in the state of Texas would you have been able to raise such a force to contend with them? IMO that would have been their thought.

Prob'ly I wasn't making myself clear; I wasn't thinking cattle on this raid, but we know that the Comanches and Kiowas beginning in the year 1860 (according to Jones' "Frontier Defense in the Civil War") would progressively switch over to rustling cattle from Texas for sale in New Mexico in a big way, to the tune of 30,000 over just a three month period in 1872.

The fact that they were able to get away with that argues that the prospect of pursuit was mostly non-existent during those years, at least in some places.



I would put forward that apart from Mexico (and even then some Mexican and Tejano Vaqueros were formidable in the field), pursuit after a raid was OFTEN the case. It might be that these mega-scale raids were only possible in Mexico, this one into Texas sure seems to have cost more than the Comanches were willing to bear, even though around 90% of 'em must have gotten away.

For the most part, Comanche adversaries were no pushovers even when the Comanches were winning, said tough enemies including the Tonkawas, who Gwynne ("Empire of the Summer Moon") dismisses as "always losing". Texans were no exception, and as Boggy notes, the first thing Comanches usually did after a conventional raid was to put some serious real estate between themselves and the places raided, just as far as horseflesh could stand.

This was exactly the behavior everyone seems to have been expecting the Comanches to follow here before word got out of their actual dispostion, even then haste was patently of the essence.

Birdwatcher

I just thought maybe with the successes of this raid they were a little overconfident and distracted, who knows?

Comes down to it, that explanation is as good as any.

Sorta surreal though that the Comanches had about 100 armed and dangerous men close on their tail for three whole days and were simply unable to do anything about it. Much is made (and wrongly so IMHO) of how the White guys were handcapped with rifles (tho' eastern tribes cut a broad swathe with theirs). One could make an equivalent case that the Comanches were never able to come up with an effective counter to a skilled rifleman, other than a rifle on their own part.

And it turns out there were more'n a few skilled riflemen on the Plains in those years.

Here's an excellent compilation of eyewitness testimony on a Texas A&M website...

http://www.tamu.edu/faculty/ccbn/dewitt/plumcreek.htm

Jumping out of sequence a bit, here's an interesting account from Ben Highsmith recounting the Brushy Creek fight in 1839 involving the same Edward Burleson of Bastrop.

Interesting because it relates a fight where both sides were skilled riflemen, and because it ends up sounding like a modern firefight instead of an early nineteenth century....

As soon as the men started the Indians followed with fearful yells, and by the time the timber was reached considerable confusion prevailed among the white men...

The Indians were crowding the settlers closely and firing at them, and the dismounted men, seeing the stand was not going to be made, hastily remounted and followed. Their order as they left the trees was Turner in front, [Jake] Burleson next, and Highsmith last.

About this time the Indians, who were close upon them, fired a volley with rifles. Highsmith felt the wind of a ball close to his ear, and at the same time saw the dust rise from the crown of Burleson�s hat, who was directly in front of him. The next instant the gallant young man reeled and fell from his saddle, shot in the back of the head....

The Indians did not pursue far, and the men all got together; and went back towards Austin. Captain Rogers was greatly dejected. Before getting back, however, they met Gen. Ed. Burleson coming rapidly with twenty men. He was informed of the disastrous fight, and that his brother Jacob was killed...

The Indians went back to Brushy Creek and there strongly posted themselves. The creek here made an acute bend, and the. Indians were in the lower part of it and concealed from view except when some of them showed themselves in order to tell the movements of the white men...

General Burleson moved his men around the position of the Comanches and occupied the upper bend of the creek, and the fight soon commenced across the space between them, which was in short rifle range.

The battle lasted a long time and was hotly contested-rifle against rifle. The Indians seemed to be nearly all armed with guns and were good shots, and still outnumbered the white men. The latter, some of whom were old Indian fighters, were cautions, exposing themselves as little as possible. The Indians did the same....

One Indian crawled out of the bed of the creek unperceived and took a position behind a large bunch of prickly pears, where he lay flat on the ground and watched his opportunity to shoot as some settler would expose some part of his body , he did execution, and it was some time before he was located, but the smoke of his gun finally betrayed him.

Winslow Turner saw where the smoke came from, and quickly ascending a small tree at great risk of his life, got sight of the Indian, fired quickly, and came down again. The Comanche jumped at the crack of the gun and tumbled over the creek bank...

After the battle was over the loss of Burleson in killed was Jack Walters, Ed. Blakey, and James Gilleland. The latter was a Methodist preacher. Of the four men killed three were shot in the head. Gilleland was shot between the point of the shoulder with the ball ranging down and going through the lungs.

Highsmith helped to carry Blakey to the house of Noah Smithwick, at Webber's Prairie, twenty miles distant from the battleground. Smithwick was brother-in-law of the wounded man.


Birdwatcher

I have read that account and a few similar Birdy. But I think we both notice the annomaliy. Comanches warriors did not like to fight afoot. In fact they really didn't like to do anything that required them not to be on horseback.

Even later when they "knew better" they still insisted on forming their circle to fight foot riflemen.

from that same website...

The account of Robert Hall, the same guy who rode all night to turn Matthew Caldwell around, and who scouted out the Comanche position the night before Plum Creek. And note how Caldwell's men "almost left" Plum Creek the evening before on account of they didn't see anyone at first Proving that, in any given historical event, hindsite sure is clearer than it was to the people actually involved at the time.

Here starting with their arrival at Plum Creek. Recall that Robert Hall had left Gonzales the evening of te 9th before before Ben McCulloch arrived from tailing the Comanche host. So the night of the 11th was the first Hall saw of him.

http://www.tamu.edu/faculty/ccbn/dewitt/plumcreek.htm#halldescrip



We got the news at Gonzales that a strong column of Comanches had passed into the lower country, and we at once got into the saddle and marched to the rescue of our friends. We camped at Isham Good's first, and, not hearing any news, we were about to return home, when Ben McCulloch rode into camp. Goat Jones was with him. They reported that the Indians had plundered the lower country, and were returning on the same trail.

Capt. Caldwell asked me to take a good man and scout to the front and see if I could see anything of the Indians. I took John Baker, and we rode all night. About daylight we came in sight of the Indians, about seven miles from our camp. We rode back and reported...

During my absence Gen. Felix Huston had been elected to the command of the army, and Ed Burleson had joined us with about one hundred men, including some fifteen Tonkaways. Gen. Huston asked me to take five picked men and ride to the front and select a good position to make the attack. I came in sight of them. They were on the prairie, and the column looked to be seven miles long.

Here I witnessed a horrible sight. A captain and one man rode in among the Indians. The captain escaped, but I saw the Indians kill the private. I ordered my men to keep at a safe distance and pick off an Indian as the opportunity presented...

At the first volley the Indians became demoralized, and it was easy to see that we had them beat just as we rode against them I received a bullet in the thigh. It made a terrible wound, and the blood ran until it sloshed out of my boots. I was compelled to dismount, or rather I fell off of my horse. After a moment I felt better and made an effort to rejoin the line of battle...

While on the skirmish fine, an Indian dashed at Mr. Smitzer with a lance. I fired right in the Indian's face and knocked him off his horse, but I did not kill him. However, I got the fine hat he had stolen...

An then one of them truth-stranger-than-fiction episodes, an account of Comanches on that march gathering around in the evening to be read to. Fehrenbach describes Wrs. Watts as an attractive woman, and apparently she was a class act....

A little further on I found Mrs. Watts. They had shot an arrow at her breast, but her steel corset saved her life. It had entered her body, but Isham Good and I fastened a big pocket knife on the arrow and pulled it out.

She possessed great fortitude, for she never flinched, though we could hear the breastbone crack when the arrow came out. She turned over on her side and bled a great deal, but she soon recovered. She was the wife of a custom house officer, and I think her maiden name was Ewing.

She asked for poor Mrs. Crosby and told us that the Indians whipped the poor woman frequently and called her a "peon," because she could not read. They had stolen several books, and when in camp at night they would gather around Mrs. Watts and ask her to explain the pictures and read to them.

And after the battle, the homecoming, Hall having been held up by his leg wound...

After some days my friends got an old buggy and hitched an old horse to it and made an effort to get me home. At the crossing of the San Marcos the old horse balked and refused to pull the vehicle up the hill. That made me mad, and I got out of the buggy and walked on home. I was tired and hungry, and I wanted to see Polly and get something to eat and have her dress my wound.

Polly was glad to see me, for she thought I was dead. Old man King had gone home, and, from some cause, he had carried my shoes. He told Polly I would be home in a few days, but during the evening she found my shoes, full of blood, and she began to scream and upbraid her father. He then had to tell her the truth, but he insisted that I was only slightly wounded.

Polly did not believe him, but when she saw me walking home she ran to meet me and declared that she never intended to let me go to fight Indians any more.

Hall, twenty-six at the time of this fight, would father thirteen children and later serve the Confederacy. For only $35,000 you can even buy some of his dud's online. Not mentioned here is that Hall arrived in Texas in 1835 crewing a sidewheeler steamboat, and later served aboard the famous Yellow Stone.

http://www.cowanauctions.com/auctions/item.aspx?ItemId=83437

At the age of 21 Hall moved to Texas and arrived shortly after the Battle of San Jacinto. He formally joined the Republic of Texas Army on June 1, 1836 and served about six months before being discharged.

Along Plum Creek and near the present town of Lockhart, the Texas volunteers surprised the Comanches and completely routed them. Hall sustained a gunshot wound in the thigh that was so severe that witnesses said the blood �sloshed out� of his boot....

After the battle, Sam Houston presented Hall with a magnificent hunting horn for his gallant conduct during the Plum Creek fight. This hunting horn, included in this auction lot, was Hall�s most prized possession. Hall valued the hunting horn so highly because, not only was it given to him by his good friend, Sam Houston, the horn itself had an inspiring provenance. According to Hall�s exceptionally rare biography, the hunting horn was presented in 1820 to Mrs. Jane Long by the buccaneer Jean Lafitte one evening during dinner aboard his flagship off Galveston Island. Mrs. Long, the wife of a Texas colonist, was informed that the horn had been taken from the body of a dead pirate. She later gave the hunting horn to Sam Houston, who then presented it to Hall. It has remained in the possession of family descendants since Hall�s death in 1899.

When Texas was annexed by the United States in 1845, conflict with Mexico was inevitable. Hall voted against joining the Union and stated that he had �voted first, last, and always for the Lone Star.� Nonetheless, when war became imminent, Hall joined a local ranger company and rode south to enlist with Ben McCulloch�s Texas Rangers in Mexico. Hall�s service as a scout with McCulloch�s Rangers was impressive. In 1847 he participated in the pivotal battle of Buena Vista and for years recalled episodes of that battle and its horrific aftermath.

Hall spent the decade of the 1850s farming and ranching in Gonzales County, Texas. Despite his Unionist sentiments, when Texas seceded from the United States, the 48-year-old Hall joined the 36th (Wood�s) Texas Cavalry Regiment. His first year of Confederate service was spent scouting on the western frontier of Texas. He later participated in several combat operations in Louisiana and along the Texas coast.

After the war, Hall moved his family to South Texas where he drove cattle in the brush country along the Nueces River. Later, he settled near the town of Cotulla.

During the 1870s Hall became an active member of the Texas Veterans Association. He savored his role as the venerable old Texas veteran and during the 1870s he made an impressive �frontiersman�s suit� from buckskin and an assortment of animal pelts. He wore the suit on �gala days and at the gathering of the old veterans.� The suit, included in this auction lot, was publicly displayed during the 1936 Texas Centennial Exposition in Dallas. Along with Hall�s canteen and hunting horn, the suit has always been in the possession of family descendants.

Robert Hall was still active in his 70s and 80s and he continued to hunt and roam the Texas prairies. One journalist described him as �hale and hearty� at the age of 82. He spent the last years of his life living with his children and grandchildren in Cotulla. He devoted a portion of that time dictating his memoirs. On December 19, 1899, the old warrior died in Cotulla

Little ol' Cotulla down in the brush country has remained basically BFE from that time until just recently, tho' I expect the Eagle Ford oil formation is presently changing all of that.

Birdwatcher

A description that later applied to many folks on the Plains where the daily use of a horse was an essential part of life, including cowboys and Texas Rangers, all of whom had rifles too.

The puzzling discrepancy is that a number of accounts, including Hamaleinen's "Comanche Empire" all state the great importance of firearms and ammuntion as trade items to the Comanches throughout their era.

Comanche rifles figure in both the skirmish outside of Linnville and again at Plum Creek, where we are told they did "most of the execution". Ford too cites a period of time when his rangers "held their breath" every time a skilled rifleman "armed with a Swiss rifle" among the Comanches fired at them, the guy hitting mounted rangers regularly enough to make them nervous.

As for the rest, one wonders how often yer average Comanche actually went up against White folks in open battle. Be pretty dumb to do the "ride-around-in-circles-while getting-shot-thing" twice. Note that not even the 400 warriors on the Great Raid pulled that stunt again after Tumlinson and his men demonstrated their excellent marksmanship the first time around. What happened at Plum Creek was mostly a stalling tactic on their part, which worked.

While we think of ourselves as the be-all and end-all, lots of Comanches likely never even SAW a Texan until the era where the borders of Comancheria had shrunk considerable. And those that did, mostly their experience would have been those innumerable raids involving lifting horses, committing random murders of opportunity, and getting away clean. So AVOIDING any fight at all. Few of these guys were ever brought to account.

Ford relates of his Pecos expedition (guided intitially by Buffalo Hump) what a great curiousity the Whites were to the Comanches, who would gather in crowds just to watch them.

What we do is tend to think of our enemies in simplistic terms, a common human trait.

JMHO and worth every penny.

Birdwatcher

Looking at this Comanche issue, we have a few overwhelming Texan victories on the one hand, contradicting the fact that an "impenetrable barrier of Comanche violence" (I forget which author put it that way) stalled the development of about half of modern-day Texas for more than thirty years.

Perusing the written histories, one finds that three out of four of these lopsided Texan victories had a common element; a superior force of mounted Comanches attempting to press home a victory against a much smaller force of Texans, and getting shot for their trouble. Perhaps ego and peer pressure came into play here, the Comanches simply not willing to cede the field to such a small number of opponents.

The first was Bird's fight in 1839, thirty four rifle-armed men versus two or three hundred Indians. IIRC five KIA among the White guys (including Captain Bird) versus at least thirty among the Indians.

The second Moore places in 1842, on the Guadalupe not far from the 1844 Walker's Creek fight. On this occasion Jack Hays and sixteen companions went out from San Antonio on the trail of the same Yellow Wolf who would be present on Walker's Creek, on this occasion he led 80 warriors in his raiding party.

Catching them on the Guadelupe, the two sides made a number of charges and counter-charges, the rifles of the rangers inflicting a reported 36 deaths and 13 wounded among the Comanches in return for perhaps five wounded on their own side.

Then the vaunted Walker's Creek fight in 1844; fifteen rangers versus eighty Indians (plus a few Mexicans in the party). Apparently the first time revolvers were used as a primary offensive weapon by an entire group of men. Against Indians as yet unfamiliar with the weapon. Twenty-three Comanche dead, thirty wounded versus one ranger dead, four seriously wounded. The Comanche totals being so high on account of they repeatedly pressed the fight. Even so, as Hays recounts, the fight might have gone against them at the end, requiring one of his men to take out a Comanche leader with a carefully-aimed rifle shot, finally demoralizing the remaining twenty Comanches on hand and bringing an end to the action.

Interestingly, the number of Comanches and Rangers engaged was similar in both Guadalupe River fights, as were the number of Comanche and Ranger casualties. One fought with mostly with rifles, the other fought first with rifles, and then revolvers, ended by a rifle shot.

I dunno that such one-sided results in a pitched battle between parties of adult males would be obtained for another thirty years, that being at Adobe Walls, again an overwhelming majority of mounted Comanches pressing impulsive attacks against a few White guys with rifles.

At Plum Creek two hundred White guys faced four to five hundred Comanche warriors. On this occasion though, the Comanches exposed themselves to rifle fire to buy time for the main body to escape.

The exact tally of Comances killed or mortally wounded is unknown, Huston said forty, Burleson said sixty, later estimates ran to eighty and above. Apparently only twenty or fewer dead bodies remained on the field. The loss on the Texas side were one killed and perhaps ten wounded.

One thing that does become apparent in the Texas era is the primacy of the rifle. In the eighteenth century, despite the vaunted accuracy of the long rifle, research reveals that the majority of frontier weapons were probably smoothbores, including an odd but seemingly common weapon referred to as a "smooth rifle"; that is a smoothbore having the heavy barreled configuration, stock form, and sights of a rifle. Indeed, I believe research has revealed that a significant proportion of the personnel of Revolutionary War rifle units were actually carrying smooth rifles.

Modern reenactors can wring surprising accuracy out of these weapons, some claim comparable results with specific loads to actual rifles. OTOH you dont read much of these smooth rifles on the plains, there a premium was placed on precision marksmanship, as the dynamics of several fights of that era attest.

Birdwatcher

Where in your opinion, were the physical boundaries of the Comancheria? I'm not interested in Mexico, but just the United States. Could you relate them to present day towns in each direction? I realize that it wasn't a square, but four towns will do. I'm curious to see if the map in your head matches the one in my own.

My own would be Scott City, KS north, Roswell, NM west, Brownsville, TX south and Tulsa east.

Well, given that the borders of Comancheria were fuzzy rather than absolute, and given that we're talking maybe 1820's before Removal really kicked in....

Down here I would put Sherman, Waco and San Antonio as the eastern margins, with the understanding that they could and did raid and travel east of those points.

South of San Antonio and along the Rio Grande the Lipan Apaches hung in there remarkably well such that I wouldn't put Texas south of San Antonio firmly in the Comanches' collective pockets.

To the west I would agree with Roswell with the caveat that Lipan and Mescalero Apaches could still make travel on those plains hazardous for Comanches and Kiowas.

In the north, other than knowing of rival nations like Osages and Pawnee, and the longstanding emnity with tribes like Cheyenne and Arapaho, I must confess I am not familiar enough with the regional history up there to have an strong opinion.

Just to confound things, your question reminded me of a source I read once having some Crow Indians from Montana accompany Kiowas on a raid far enough south into Mexico that they saw parrots and monkeys, that same source recounting I believe travellers on the Santa Fe trail encountering a starving Crow Indian on foot, said Indian having set out to see the country and run into misfortune, losing his horses and gear.

Birdwatcher

I've had a book called The Tribal Wars of the Southern Plains, that I've needed to read for several years. I wish I knew more about territories and such but...I guess I should have defined "Comancheria" better, but I meant the area that they normally raided into as opposed to either areas they might raid into or areas that they always did. I've read about them raiding into Colorado for years and assume they did. They had longstanding feuds with the Osage who also had the "Civilized" Indians pressing them from the east. Kiowas were a known ally. Kiowas are even less known than Comanch. Some sources put them at the southern boundaries of the Comancheria whereas others put them in Oklahoma and Kansas. Kansas has Comanche County and the town of Kiowa so...You've got the Wichitas kind of as a barrier who were said to be friendly with whites and Comanch and a kind of trading buffer or partner. One figures that Comanch would have no trouble raiding into their territory though. It's almost always said they raided to or into the Cross Timbers, which I live near and used to live in...

Anyway as to the Cheyenne...you have a similar tribe that are allied with another weaker tribe, the Arapaho. But at least for the Adobe Walls fight, you had them allied with the Comanch. There is the sad tale of the German sisters captured in Kansas but then weren't they ransomed out of Texas or Oklahoma? I forget. Certainly the Southern Cheyenne would have had territory that overlapped the Comancheria-then there were the Pawnee, made out to be such badasses in Dancing with Wolves and always noted but not documented that much in stuff I've read. Pawnee County Kansas too, not so far north either.

Everything around here is "Osage" or "Cherokee" with a sprinkling of other eastern latecomer Indian place names.

Maybe the Arkansas River would make a pretty good northern boundary?

About the time Dances With Wolves was coming out I had a conversation with an Indian woman in Oklahoma City, she said the Pawnees STILL had a dark reputation among the tribes up there. As for being documented by White folks, one has to take that with a grain of salt. A LOT of events important personally to the tribe invilved never made it in much detail to our own history, especially if it didn't affect us.

Consider the catastrophic die-offs among the Comanches in the Texas era, far exceeding deaths in combat by whole orders of magnitude, yet almost entirely undocumented. We INFER these deaths by what must have happened.

Elesewhere, one likewise has to distiguish between pre- and post-epidemic populations. Prior to the massive smallpox epidemic of the 1830's the Blackfeet were the baddest thing on the block on the Northern Plains, and the Mandans and Arikaras dominated their respective regions. The Lakota Sioux filling a power vaccuum only after the near-demise of these groups.

With respect to the Pawnees, weren't it a Pawnee that misguided Coronado from New Mexico clear to Kansas in a successful bid on said Pawnee's part to get home?

If one uses where Indians raided as the definition of territory, things get even more fuzzy. That would put much of Mexico in the Kiowas' orbit (and lets not forget the allied Kiowa-Apaches either ). I have read too of Apaches from New Mexico stealing horses around Nacodoches in East Texas in the late Eighteenth Century.

A similar feat accomplished by Lipan and Mescalero Apaches out of Fort Stanton NM in the early 1880's when they raided almost to Fredericksburg in the Texas Hill Country.

I would define Comancheria as the area where Comanches were likely to set up camp on a regular basis, with the understanding that other groups might even then pass right through there, as we ourselves did when establishing the Santa Fe trade route.

Birdwatcher

The Shawnee were the earliest mass-migration across the Mississippi that we note, and that was in the 1770's, fully half the tribe leaving the Ohio Country and decamping to Missouri. I believe some Cherokees were already in Texas by 1800.

The tribal situation thoughout our history was a lot more dynamic than we commonly allow. Even though we never question that White guys up and travelled all over the place during those same years.

For example those Keechais who stole Noah Smithwick's horses outside of Bastrop were technically Pawnees.

And Lewis and Clark and their "Corps of Discovery" were guided halfway across the continent by an illiterate teenage girl carrying an infant.

...and when it came to just average Joes exploring vast distances of unknown territory without the subsequent fanfare of popular American history, we Americans ourselves were clearly skunked by the French, by as much as a 100 years in some instances.....

Birdwatcher

Pawnees around Bastrop...wow. Looking forward to the next installment.

As an aside, we go right past the area the Corps of Discovery camped on the Missouri River...Kaw Point, all the time. I need to stop and let the kids look around. It's not in a real good area though.

Cole as to where the Comanche would raid the best answer is anywhere they damn well pleased.

The Comanche broke up and made the settlement of Bucareli abandon the area and they were on the Trinity rive about fifteen miles south east of where I live. On the San Antonio road.
Also the last white man killed in Leon County by Inians was in 1871 near Normangee. They were Comanche about a dozen so it is said and caught a kid Robert Rogers hunting a milch cow.
Never were caught but the trail was lost when they crossed the Navasota river going west.

By happy chance, official business brung me through Bastrop today, and the locales of this narrative are sorta between Bastrop and San Antone. Finishing in early afternoon, I was able to cover the route in daylight, though the skies were grey with rain (a pleasant sight around these parts).

First off, for reference, here's the map again.



On the morning of the 10th, Robert Hall caught up to Matthew Caldwell in Seguin. Notwithstanding the 30 mile all-night ride just endured by all concerned, Caldwell immediately set out for the Plum Creek crossing of the Gonzales-Austin road, perhaps twenty-five miles away.

As Caldwell and Ward's companies reached the Seguin area on the morning of August 10th they encountered courier Robert Hall, another Gonzales man. He was sent to find Caldwell's men to relay the word of the attacks on Victoria and Linnville.

John Henry Brown noted that Hall arrived "on foaming steed" to announce that the Indians were retreating directly up the trail they had made on the way down.

Captain Caldwell announced that his forces must move at once to meet the Indians at Plum Creek. "After rest and breakfast and strengthened by a few recruits," wrote Brown, "we moved on and camped that night on the Old San Antonio crossing of the San Marcos."

The modern Farm-to-Market 20 (FM20) is the most direct route between Seguin and Bastrop nowadays, passing close by the probable Plum Creek battlefield, hence following the approximate route of both Caldwell and Burleson's forces as they hurried to the fight.

The original prairie is long gone from this ground nowadays, but a few locales give views that likely give an inkling of how it once was.

Here's two views taken along FM20 along the stretch between Seguin and the San Marcos River crossing. Caldwell's force passed this way through the oppressive heat of August 11th, 1840.





And the crossing of the San Marcos, that stream still retaining its spring-fed character at this point.



No telling where the exact crossing and campsite was of course, but somewhere around here. Despite the overnight stop, the horses were likely worn out, Caldwell probably only made twelve miles tops the next day....

"The 11th was intensely hot, and out ride was chiefly over a burnt prairie, the flying ashes being blinding to the eyes.

That would be along this stretch...



Waiting some hours at noon, watching for the approach of the enemy after night, we arrived at Good's cabin, on the Gonzales and Austin road, a little east of Plum Creek."

Now a map is in order. The only one I found was a Plum Creek watershed map. Here's the relevant section, Lockhart did not exist in 1840.



Caldwell would have crossed from the southwest, crossing the West and Clear Forks of Plum Creek before crossing PLum Creek proper.

Waiting some hours at noon, watching for the approach of the enemy after night, we arrived at Good's cabin, on the Gonzales and Austin road, a little east of Plum Creek."

The red dots are water-sampling sites. As best I can determine at this point, Isham Good's cabin was located norteast of the top red dot on Plum Creek east of modern-day Lockhart. Perhaps he drew water from that creek emanating northeast from that red dot location.

Here's the marker on MF20 for Good's cabin site, I expect on the evening of the 10th, morning of the 11th, you could have easily found the Texans if you couldn't already see 'em from this very spot...

[img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v148/Sharpshin/frontierfolk/plum5.jpg[/img]

.and from that point looking southwest towards Plum Creek, maybe a mile away...

[img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v148/Sharpshin/frontierfolk/plum6.jpg[/img]

Plum Creek itself might not look like much, but it winds across this former prairie for fifty-three miles, and back in the day was an important enough landmark that all concerned immediately knew the place to stop the Comanches was along this stream, more or less along this road.

[img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v148/Sharpshin/frontierfolk/plum7.jpg[/img]

[img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v148/Sharpshin/frontierfolk/plum8.jpg[/img]



Birdwatcher

I was just chatting with a friend of mine today about my own family who came into this area up here in the 1880's. There was a neighbor who had pioneered the area (it was one of the "Bleeding Kansas" counties during the mid 1850's as a lot of Kansas was still Indian Territory at that time). This old boy had came in via covered wagon. He told that at the time the rolling prairies around here were treeless except for a bit of brush along the cricks and Oak timber along the Osage river and that the cricks were clear and deep. Now we have a lot of trees and many of the cricks are not much and certainly aren't very clear.

Point-being, I'm guessing that Plum Creek used to be a lot bigger deal than it appears now and there probably was a lot less brush on those prairies you show.

It's been my experience that there is little difference in the terrain from here to there. Probably little difference even up in the Dakotas, but I've never been there and have even only been in Nebraska a couple of times.

BW, exceedingly interesting. I appreciate the investment! But I've PM you concerning another matter. Thanks.

By happy chance, official business brung me through Bastrop today, and the locales of this narrative are sorta between Bastrop and San Antone. Finishing in early afternoon, I was able to cover the route in daylight, though the skies were grey with rain (a pleasant sight around these parts).

First off, for reference, here's the map again."

If you should heed the comment made by a poster earlier in this thread about writing your own book,your penchant for actually visiting the places you write about will serve you well.You won't make as many stupid statements as are found in "Empire of the summer moon".

Rivers and mountains don't move much over the course of a hundred years and when an author is careless enough with the placement of them,I question the authenticity of other un-documented statements he makes.Even Gwyne's choice of source material is suspect.He titles one of his chapters,"The Salt Creek Massacre" , and in his notes he mentions that it is often called;"The Warren Wagon Train Massacre".

A minimum amount of research , or a visit to the area would instantly reveal that "Warren" is the correct reference for the event he describes.The real "Salt Creek Massacre" actually happened , but was several miles to the WNW of the Warren event.What Gwyne has done with this error in his popular book is to obliterate the real Salt Sreek event by giving it's name to the Warren event.

His other errors-such as placing the Wichita River in Oklahoma - are just bothersome but won't likely perpetuate the error by future writers.[No,it wasn't a typo where he meant "Washita",in his narrative he runs the Wichita Northeastward into Indian Territory]

When he lets his imagination fill in the gaps between two sources,he displays his geographical ignorance in quite a few places.Here are just a few corrections:

The Red River didn't "carve out Palo Duro Canyon" like the Colorado carved out the Grand Canyon.The Red [arguably] originates in the Palo Duro.

You can't reach Ft Belknap by "traveling 8 miles on South after crossing the Red".

I gotta go pick up "Punkin",she's too sick to go to daycare.

Watercourses do change considerably, but little rivers like the Witch don't jump bigger ones. Those are some pretty glaring errors.

A few years back, some guys from Independence, Missouri, who were friends of my Great Uncle, located and dug up a Steamboat that sunk on the Missouri River in 1856. It was eighty feet deep in the ground under a Kansas cornfield!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabia_Steamboat

http://1856.com/

The story is almost completely unconnected, but still very interesting.

This morning Plum Creek crested at 18 feet @ Lockhart. 12 feet is flood stage......

Wow. I wish you had some pics. We could use some rain.

The geographic features around the area of the two separate"massacres" I mentioned are:

Cox Mountain
Flatop Mountain
Turtle Hole
Salt Sreek
Flint Creek

The author of "Summer Moon"-according to info in the book itself- came to Texas 15 years ago.His "research"-again,according to him - was done at college campuses at Austin,Lubbock, and [maybe] Alpine.If he had spent even half a day in Young County,he would have been much better prepared.

Since the book was about Quanah Parker,I thought it odd that he didn't mention a funny exchange between the chief and the General:

General: "Chief,you have to pick out only one wife , and tell the others they must live apart from you".

Quanah: "YOU pick one.YOU tell the rest!"

Have they lifted the burn ban yet?

No school today in Lockhart! When i got up this morning the water was about 8 inches deep in the yard. And the county road was underwater. Lots of water thru our bottom land. Wonder how Jeff is down at La Grange???

On the subject of Comancheria, in the 18th century in the Bastrop Area, one Spanish military journada (can't remember but i think it was the 1757 journada) did deviate from the established trail to the east of the Camino Real, to the area of probably present day Burleson Springs. Not all the way to present Bastrop. The tribes they encountered were of the Saha dialects. The established road way skirted an immense grass prairie, just east of the IH 35 corridor, before it veered back to the east and on toward the Presidio Los Adaes.

Reason for this was to avoid the almost inpenetrateble "Monte Grande" . The large post oak and blackjack forest that bisects the state from deep south Texas almost to the Red River.

The regular Colorado river crossing in this vicinity was at the Arroyo Garapatas juncture. (Present Onion Creek). This is just about smack daube at the present intersection of SH 130 Toll road and SH 71. Here in 1716 on his way back to Natchitoches La., Louis Jurcherau de St. Denis, leading a party of Spanish trade delegation (without the consent of the Spanish Crown, he had married into the Ramon family to cement a deal); The party was attacked by a band of "Lipanos" who had covered themselves with green buffalo robes in the hopes that they would turn fusil balls......

Good stuff, guys. Keep it coming!

You mean the Cross Timbers? It runs clear up here. I used to live in it, now I live close to the eastern edge of it. The Cross Timbers is some beautiful country.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross_Timbers

At this crossing of the Camino, St. Denis separated from the party while on a "hunting" expedition. The rest of the party continued toward the northeast. It was several weeks before St. Denis caught up with is part. His excuse was he had become lost (right!). It is speculated that upon viewing the highlands west of present Austin, he may have gone for a look see.

It was thought that the Spanish had silver mines to the west. But the Los Almagres weren't discoverd til much later...... The French were always in search of these alleged mines. And they had no clue to the vast area they were trying to explore. Even La Salle hinted to these mines.....

Pretty much the same thing! But here they are thick as all dickens.

That is pretty common. If you read the histories, it is apparent that there were large praries everywhere 200 years ago. In my area, which is nothing but trees unless it is pasture, there are plenty of accounts of praries so big that one couldn't see trees anywhere from the middle of them. My dad is in his 70s and even when he was young, they still referred to a couple places around as Big Prairie or Little Prairie. Now, I doubt anyone would even recognize the names, much less know where they were.

We have more trees now in the U.S. than we probably ever did. Heck, even in the east there are way more trees. Look at the old photographs in the settled areas the trees were gone in a hurry, cut down for building materials and/or firewood.

Same here Coss. I'm located between the Trinity and Navasota rivers. In the old days, so I am told, the upland prairies were much bigger in extent than they are now.
Just in my area the ones that I can think of the names for are/were running from east to west or Trinity to Navasota rivers are:
Mustang
Goose
Middleton
Leon
Rogers
Sand
Little Rock and Big rock
Wheelock
Buffalo

Each of them then several thousand acres in extent. Now so shrunken by timber and brush some of them are almost unreconizable.

They are thick up here, but are kept in check somewhat, by controlled burning and/or aerial spraying. I would make that map of the CT region much larger than it is. Certainly a lot of that country exists down around San Antone and northward much farther than the map shows. Up around the Emporia region there certainly are a lot of post oaks interspersed with native prairies. It exists on the western edge of my own county which isn't included in the map. My own immediate area resembles the area around Dallas and Sherman pretty much although there are rugged mountains between here and there that don't resemble either place they stand between.

Yup! There were seas of grass as well in the middle of the mott! The big one was around the site of the Rancheria grande campsite somewhere in the vicinity of where the Little River runs into the Brazos or a bit downstream. Maybe even as far downstream as the SH 21 crossing of the Brazos.

This site was a large campsite where natives met at a predetermined time for a trade fair. Henri Joutel recorded it in his memoirs with La Salle. Along with another site in the area of present monument hill south of La Grange Tx. I will also add these site are approximate, as they are reasonably good guestimates to their location.

Probably the one man who has done the best research on these locations along the Camino Real is former TxDOT archarologist Al McGraw. He is a wealth of information. And a fellow Mauser shooter!

My place in Erath Co. is too thick to walk through in many places.2-3 different kinds of oak. Some mesquite and cedar. They used to call it the Cross Timbers. Good hunting, better trapping. The towns of Comanche and Lipan are close, so I guess there is a reason for those names.

The Army was responsible for many of the errors in historical records.The confusion about the Salt Creek Massacre I mentioned earlier in this thread is because the Army referred to the area just West of Cox Mountain [where the Warren train was ambushed] as the "Salt Grass Prarie".There appears to be no reason for applying that name to it and I've found no other reference to it.They evidently also mistook a branch of Cameron Creek for Salt Creek in one report and Flint Creek in another.

Of course,nowadays, the Army always gets stuff right.

Doc,

My friend gave me my Nook back last night and of the 17 new books I downloaded,he liked your recommendation the best. Told me the next time he comes to Uvalde,he's going to look around a bit more than he did while at our dove hunt.

"For example those Keechais who stole Noah Smithwick's horses outside of Bastrop were technically Pawnees."

Only if by linguistics! Keechis were Caddoan..... Just like the Anadarko, Adai, Bedias, Nebadache, Nachito, and Neche etc........ They were recorded early on by both French and Spanish.

I believe Pawnee's were once refered to as the plains Caddo and were supposedly associated with the Quapaws of SE Arkansas. Another Caddoan linguistics group member.

One the subject of French exploration of what was to become this "Comancheria" , When Francois de la Harpe led his expedition up the Red river he was told by the Goveneur (I believe it was Cadillac at this time) they they would find "unicorns" in te upper reaches of the river.

Upon their arrival at the Nasoni village (another Caddoan group) just west of present Texarkana, the natives had prepared a feast in their honor. From the description given by de la Harpe, apparently the Nasoni had spitted a cooked a whole elk. However de la Harpe wrote in his journal that they "sauvages" had prepared a unicorn for their enjoyment. Just and the Gov had stated!!!!! This was 1710.

Mike have you ever run across the french phrase for the Comanche???

BN

Boggy,I'm thinking the practice of referring to areas as "Roberts Prarie"-to use an example from Jack County- was confined to that part of Texas along what is now the I-35 corridor and West to the confluence of the Clear and Salt Forks of the Brazos at present day South Bend Tx.

It stands to reason that the early settlers coming from the East would have been impressed by the large expanse of grassland.Once they moved further West,they discovered that the whole damned place could be called a "prarie",and I don't encounter many "prarie" place names West of Ft Griffin,for example.

Also, the praries in the Cross Timbers were short grass praries,unlike the country to the West which had the tall grass.They were also open range at that time.

In fact,I think it's likely that the "Salt Grass Prarie" rendered in the Army's reports probably should have been "Short Grass Prarie".It makes more sense.There are no local references to either term , as far as I know.

Quapaws were clear up in our area. Just south of Joplin is Quapaw, Oklahoma, near the infamous Spooklight.

I think you've got the prairies turned around. I can't speak for Texas for sure, but up here, the farther west you go the more you get into the short grass. Where I live was considered Tallgrass, unless I'm mistaken. An educated guess would put the Cross Timbers as a pretty good boundary between the two probably being mixed country. I can't imagine there being much difference between here and there. As to the Salt Grass, I always thought that referred to the "piedmont-ish" areas close to the coast.

\
Henri de Tonti had built a post (Askansas Post) amongst the Quapaw, close to where the Arkansas runs into the Mississippi. His post was established when he came down the Mississippi with La Salle in the 1670's!

The Quapaws were known to build high towers for sleeping to catch the breezes that would keep the mosquitos off of them in the warmer months! It was Tonti's Arkansas Post that the remnants of La Salle's party (led by Henri Joutel) was trying to reach (and they eventually did) after La Salles assassination by Archleveque in 1685.

The irony of this was that Tonti was also looking for them as he had heard from Les Sauvage of "lost white men" looking for him. Unfortunately de Tonti caught a fevr on this journeyr and died before he could return to his post.

Tonti was an interesting sort. He had a hand blown off by a grenade while serving as a mercenary in Sicily. In it's place was a brass ball. The Sauvage called him "Iron Hand".

Nope,the "Cross Timbers" is one of the ecological regions of Texas.I know that the term is also used to describe a much larger area extending into other states,but I use it as a clearly defined geographic area in Texas.To this day ,the Post Oak pastures have little blue stem[a tall grass] and the mesquite pastures have buffalo grass or mesquite grass.

The stirrup high grass was in the Rolling Plains,just West of the Cross Timbers , and up on the Caprock.

The Monte Grande that I refered to is an extremely thick oak "encinal". A vast tangle of vines, yaupons, etc.... It is in essence, almost jungle like. There are still large areas of this in existance. Boggy Creek Ranger knows exactly what I refer to!

One Spanish journada did attempt to cut thru a portion of it. In several years the forest soon reclaim it.

One of the prime directives of the Viceroy in New Spain was that any journada entering the lands north of the Rio Grande were NOT to establish new routes, but were to utilize existing native trails. The Viceroy was very serious about this.

We have heavy areas of blackjack and post oak up here but it is not as thick as the Texas Cross Timbers country...

I've seen that and we have nothing like it in N Central Texas.One of my hunting campaneros has a ranch near Austwell-in fact it joins the Aransas Pass Wildlife Refuge - and much of it looks like what I see up around James' place from I-45.

I also believe this to be true. I was born and raised in Caddo Co. Oklahoma nestled among the Keechi hills south of Anadarko. The Keechis are a small group of unique hills a little north and east of the Wichita Mts. Blackjack oak country on the edge of the plains.

That's what I'm talkin' about!!!!!! Ol' rancher I know said as a young man he worked on a ranch at Gause Tx. south of Hearne Tx. Said he ruined a levi dungaree jacket first day out in that stuff on horseback. The stuff is bad.

Speaking of Gause. It lies close to one of the islands of grass in the Monte. West of Bryan/ College Station. A local geographical landmark there is a hill known as Sugarloaf. Many think this may be the location of one of the Native villages of "Tortuga" on the Camino Real.....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tallgrass_prairie

http://www.nps.gov/tapr/index.htm

I have all those grasses on my property. The Tallgrass is to the east. The Shortgrass is to the west. Again, I'm guessing and don't know exactly what the Cross Timbers is as far as short vs. tall, but it's probably a pretty good demarcation between the two prairies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shortgrass_prairie

http://www.radford.edu/~swoodwar/CLASSES/GEOG235/biomes/tempgrass/prairie.html

I don't think that map is totally accurate, but as you can see, the Caprock is clearly in the short-grass region.

You know,I often wonder about the Indian names given to things.There is a Keechi Creek I cross down in Palo Pinto County , and another one further West , but I can't recall just where.

Lake Kickapoo is 10 miles or so from where I sit,but there is a Kickapoo Creek down below San Angelo and I saw "Kickapoo" applied to a creek or something just NW of Houston a couple weeks ago.

My point is that I woder if some of the places were named for tribes that actually had nothing to do with the area.

Tonk Valley in Young County was named because of the reservation that was established there,not because it was in the tribe's territory.

Along that same line,all the population estimates of the tribes are suspect.My Great Grandmother was half Comanche and half Cherokee and is enrolled as such in the Gov't Registry but drew her rations with the Wichitas.She claimed that most Comanches got in a line for one of the other tribes [that's how they registered them;form lines according to tribe to draw rations] because the blankets given to the Comanches were purposely infected with smallpox.

My Grandfather-being half white- was enlisted as an Indian Policeman and stayed one until they were dis-banded.

Just as a general observation, I would guess anything I am posting here is pretty much History 101 to the Texas history fanatic/reenactor crowd.

A puzzle though that Plum Creek ain't in print better than it is, the way that Rev War and War Between the States battles are.

Back to the fight... with respect to the vegetation, Moore writes...

From the Big Hill near [fifteen miles east] of Gonzales to Plum Creek, this area of Texas was heavily wooded. Beyond Plum Creek there was an open prairie which led towards the hill country area of Austin. The trail of the Indians paralleled the Clear Fork of Plum Creek.

This was at least a thirty-mile long north-south belt of what one presumes was largely post oak and associated brush. For those not familiar, post oak is one a number of species of smallish, heat and drought tolerant oaks.

Browsing around the web, the marker for the Plum Creek fight actually lies inside the town of Lockhart, and it says this....

http://www.forttours.com/pages/hmcaldwell.asp#Plum

The Battle of Plum Creek, August 12, 1840, began on Comanche Flats (5.5 mi. SE) and proceeded to Kelley Springs (2.5 mi. SW), with skirmishes as far as present San Marcos and Kyle.

Relating this to the watershed map...



Hwy 183 runs north-south between Lockhart and Gonzales. That is the route probably taken by Ben McCulloch's group as they hurried to Isham Good's cabin (just above the top red dot on Plum Creek.

Caldwell, as we have seen, inbound from Seguin, would have come in from the southwest, crossing the West and Clear Forks of Plum Creek.

Burleson and his group arrived the morning of the battle, coming down from the northeast.

The Comanches would be coming north on a course east of Hwy 183 and would have been looking to angle northwest towards home.

Moore has it that the fight, once commenced, proceeded up the Clear Fork of Plum Creek. "5.5 miles SE" of the historical marker in Lockhart would put the beginning of the fight near the confluence of the Clear Fork and Plum Creek proper. This would also be a logical crossing point for a Comanche force coming from the south and angling to the northwest.

This is what Moore has to say of the evening before the fight.

Arriving at Isham Good's cabin from Austin at about the same time was Major General Felix Huston, leader of the Texas Militia, with his aide, Major John Izod, and Captain George Howard of the First Regiment. Huston arrived on the evening of August 11 "and found Captain Caldell encamped on Plum Creek with about one hundred men".

The three companies moved two or three miles and made camp for the night on Plum Creek, above the return trail of the Indians.

I'm guessing they stopped on the northeast bank of Plum Creek at the bend, about where Tenney Creek is marked on the map;

McCulloch's party must have crossed the Clear Fork on the way to Plum Creek.

I have been assuming that Caldwell took the most direct route coming up from the southwest and crossed the West and Clear Forks. But if they really had camped that night on the Old San Antonio crossing of the San Marcos on the evening of the 10th, that could possibly put them ten miles due east of Lockhart. Seems odd that they would take such a roundabout path given that they were in a mad hurry. The San Marcos is spring-fed, with a relatively finite inflow from the source even in wet years, I'd hazard a guess it was fordable in a number of places.

In either case, Caldwell's route on the 11th would have taken him right across the expected return route of the Comanches. This might partly explain his slow pace that day, as John Henry Brown noted they had been...

Waiting some hours at noon, watching for the approach of the enemy after night

The perspective of Caldwell's party could have been that by the time they finally made Isham Good's cabin that night they had crossed tbe entire expected route of the Comanches and found no sign, nor is it mentioned they encountered any other Texans that day. Neither would they have crossed McCulloch's trail.

In that light, it is not so surprising that Robert Hall writes of Caldwell's party...

We camped at Isham Good's first, and, not hearing any news, we were about to return home, when Ben McCulloch rode into camp. Goat Jones was with him. They reported that the Indians had plundered the lower country, and were returning on the same trail.

Up until that point they would have had no recent confirmation that the Comanches were indeed coming that way. After all, they had been looking all day and must have been expecting the usual rapid withdrawal on the part of the Comanches. It would have been a reasonable asumption on their part that the Comanches must have passed north somewhere else.

Skipping ahead in the narrative, here's Moore's description of the movement of the Texan force on the morning of the 12th, just before they were joined by Burleson's men...

Huston's hundred-man command moved forward... across one or two ravines and glades.... They entered a small, open space well concealed from the larger prairie by a thicket of trees and bushes along a creek branch

Which would fit the topography south of Tenney Creek.

I'm guessing Kelley Springs, where the Comanches would turn to face the oncoming Texans, may be represented by the blue dot on the southernmost fork of the Clear Fork. Just downstream of that small blue dot there appears to be a pond or wet area indicated. We know that during the battle several Comanches fled across a wet area, miring some of their horses and laden mules.

Wish I would have known this yesterday, turns out I might have practically driven across the site of the heaviest fighting while headed out on FM20 West away from Lockhart.

Birdwatcher